Abnormalities in visual processing amongst students with body image concerns

Individuals with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) appear to possess abnormalitiesin the way they observe and discriminate visual information. A pre-occupationwith perceived defects in appearance has been attributed to a local visualprocessing bias. We studied the nature of visual bias in individuals who may beat risk of developing BDD – those with high body image concerns (BICs) – byusing inverted stimulus discrimination. Inversion disrupts global, configuralinformation in favor of local, feature-based processing. 40 individuals withhigh BIC and 40 low BIC controls performed a discrimination task with uprightand inverted faces, bodies, and scenes. Individuals with high BIC discriminatedinverted faces and bodies faster than controls, and were also more accurate whendiscriminating inverted bodies and scenes. This reduction in inversion effectfor high BIC individuals may be due to a stimulus-general local, detail-focusedprocessing bias, which may be associated with maladaptive fixation on smallfeatures in their appearance.