Body size over-estimation in women with anorexia nervosa is not qualitatively different from female controls.

Cornelissen, Piers, Johns, Anna and Tovée, Martin (2013) Body size over-estimation in women with anorexia nervosa is not qualitatively different from female controls. Body Image, 10 (1). pp. 103-11. ISSN 1740-1445

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Abstract

Over-estimation of body size is a cardinal feature of anorexia nervosa (AN), usually revealed by comparing individuals who have AN with non-AN individuals, the inference being that over-estimation is pathological. We show that the same result can be reproduced by sampling selectively from a single distribution of performance in body size judgement by comparing low BMI individuals with normal BMI individuals. Over-estimation of body size in AN is not necessarily pathological and can be predicted by normal psychophysical biases in magnitude estimation. We confirm this prediction in a dataset from a morphing study in which 30 women with AN and 137 control women altered a photograph of themselves to estimate their actual body size. We further investigated the relative contributions of sensory and attitudinal factors to body-size overestimation in a sample of 166 women. Our results suggest that both factors play a role, but their relative importance is task dependent.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Anorexia nervosa, body size over-estimation, body mass index
Subjects:	B100 Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology C800 Psychology
Department:	Faculties > Health and Life Sciences > Psychology
Depositing User:	Ay Okpokam
Date Deposited:	05 Mar 2013 10:26
Last Modified:	11 Oct 2019 14:01
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/11333

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