A cognitive training to improve body image in healthy young females: A pilot study

Visual exposure to extreme body size stimuli triggers alterations in one’s body image at an explicit and implicit level. Changes in perception of one’s body shape and size as well as satisfaction with the own body are highly associated with eating disorders, and especially anorexia nervosa. Previous findings showed body image amelioration following brief exposure to fat body pictures in normal-weighted women. In this study, we explored the effectiveness of a novel training programme to improve our participants’ body image at an implicit level. We randomly assigned two covert attention tasks to 14 normal-weighted female exposing them to fat bodies (experimental group) or 14 normal-weighted female exposing them to fat objects (control group) for 15 minutes during a 3-days intervention. Before and after the attentional exposure training, we tested the effect on participants’ body dissatisfaction by the means of the Body Satisfaction Questionnaire (BSQ-34) and the association between the ‘self/others’ and ‘thin/fat’ concepts using an Implicit Association Test (IAT). We also collected measurements of anxiety, depression, eating attitudes and interoception. Results showed that exposure to fat bodies but not to fat bottles improves body satisfaction at an explicit level. No changes found in association between the ‘self’ and ‘thin’ concepts for both exposure groups. Furthermore, pre-to-post exposure effects were not associated to anxiety, depression, eating attitudes and interoception. Our results demonstrated that repeated exposure to fat sized bodies in normal weighted women is able to ameliorate one’s body image significantly improving body satisfaction. We suggest that this training has the potential to be a valuable treatment for body image disturbances characterizing life-threatening mental health conditions such as anorexia nervosa.