胖负面身体自我女大学生对胖信息的注意偏好:注意警觉还是注意维持

本研究对已有负面身体自我个体注意偏好研究采用的实验范式的问题进行了分析,提出胖负面身体自我个体对胖相关信息的注意偏向存在的另一种可能,即胖负面身体自我个体对胖相关信息可能存在注意维持时间更长的假设。共设计了3个实验对假设进行验证。实验1a采用线索范式研究高胖负面身体自我个体对胖相关词语的注意警觉和注意维持,线索目标SOA为300ms,实验1b采用同样的实验范式,只是将实验材料变为更具直接意义的身体轮廓图。两个实验的结果均支持实验假设,但是未能排除反应准备和线索对目标产生掩蔽等因素的影响。因此,实验2在身体和花瓶轮廓图周围呈现字母,要求被试对字母进行辨认,对被试的注意维持成分进行直接的测量。结果验证了高胖负面身体自我女大学生对胖身体轮廓图注意维持时间更长。综合几个实验的结果,得到以下结论:在本实验条件下,胖负面身体自我女大学生对胖身体信息的注意偏差成分是注意维持时间更长。

Attention Biases of Undergraduate Women with Fat Negative Physical Self: Orienting or Maintenance

Fat Negative Physical Self (FNPS) is defined as negative cognition, emotion and behavior regarding the self as fat. There are some studies on attention biases for fat-related information among FNPS individuals. However, researchers assume that the central feature of attention biases in the FNPS is attention orienting, which means that fat-related information attracts the initial attention of FNPS individuals. The present study raises doubt about this view. Another possibly more salient attention bias in FNPS individuals is of that attention maintenance, wherein fat stimuli are difficult to disengage from after they have been detected. Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis. Participants were assigned to experimental and control groups from their scores on the Negative Physical Self Scale-Fat (NPSS-F, Chen, Jackson, Huang, 2006). Experiment 1a used a cuing paradigm and the SOA was set to 300ms, in order to study orienting versus disengagement components of attention bias. Experiment 1b used the same paradigm as experiment 1a, with the exception that the cueing materials were body figure pictures and vase silhouette. In experiment 2, we modified the paradigm so that participants had to identify letters that might be located around pictures which were presented on the center of the monitor. The results of experiment 1a and 1b were consistent with the hypothesis. The results of Experiment 2 suggested that attention was maintained on the fat body figure longer than on the thin body figure. However, another unexpected result was that time focused on the normal body figure was also longer than that of the thin body figure. Further analyses indicted results of Experiment 2 were not a function of BMI but instead a result of heighted fatness concern. In conclusion, we found that attention of female college students with high FNPS levels reflected more maintenance than initial orienting towards fatness stimuli.