ArticlePloS one2018
Visual attention mediates the relationship between body satisfaction and susceptibility to the body size adaptation effect.
Article in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- How thin is too thin? Evidence from visual aftereffects in body size estimation.Psychological research · 2026Article
- Exploring the digital mirror: Problematic social media usage and its influence on body shape among medical students in a South Indian Tertiary Care Setting.Journal of family medicine and primary care · 2025Article
- Visual Attention Patterns Toward Female Bodies in Anorexia Nervosa-An Eye-Tracking Study with Adolescents and Adults.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The effect of an odd-one-out visual search task on attentional bias, body size adaptation, and body dissatisfaction.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- The relationship between body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to thin bodies in Malaysian Chinese and White Australian women: a dot probe study.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Perception of the non-dominant hand as larger after non-judgmental focus on its details.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Experience-dependent reshaping of body gender perception.Psychological research · 2022Article
- Evidence of attentional bias toward body stimuli in men.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2022Review
- Changes in the perceived size of the body following exposure to distorted self-body images.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- The effect of attention on body size adaptation and body dissatisfaction.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Misalignment between perceptual boundaries and weight categories reflects a new normal for body size perception.Scientific reports · 2021Observational
- Numerosity adaptation partly depends on the allocation of implicit numerosity-contingent visuo-spatial attention.Journal of vision · 2021Article
- Over or Under? Mental Representations and the Paradox of Body Size Estimation.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Editorial: Experimental Approaches to Body Image, Representation and Perception.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Experimental manipulation of muscularity preferences through visual diet and associative learning.PloS one · 2021Article
- The Role of Temporal and Spatial Attention in Size Adaptation.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2020Article
- Does repeatedly viewing overweight versus underweight images change perception of and satisfaction with own body size?Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- Body Size Adaptation Alters Perception of Test Stimuli, Not Internal Body Image.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- An Assessment of Computer-Generated Stimuli for Use in Studies of Body Size Estimation and Bias.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- The Representation of Body Size: Variations With Viewpoint and Sex.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Body size misperception-the belief that one is larger or smaller than reality-affects a large and growing segment of the population. Recently, studies have shown that exposure to extreme body stimuli results in a shift in the point of subjective normality, suggesting that visual adaptation may be a mechanism by which body size misperception occurs. Yet, despite being exposed to a similar set of bodies, some individuals within a given geographical area will develop body size misperception and others will not. The reason for these individual difference is currently unknown. One possible explanation stems from the observation that women with lower levels of body satisfaction have been found to pay more attention to images of thin bodies. However, while attention has been shown to enhance visual adaptation effects in low (e.g. rotational and linear motion) and high level stimuli (e.g., facial gender), it is not known whether this effect exists in visual adaptation to body size. Here, we test the hypothesis that there is an indirect effect of body satisfaction on the direction and magnitude of the body fat adaptation effect, mediated via visual attention (i.e., selectively attending to images of thin over fat bodies or vice versa). Significant mediation effects were found in both men and women, suggesting that observers' level of body satisfaction may influence selective visual attention to thin or fat bodies, which in turn influences the magnitude and direction of visual adaptation to body size. This may provide a potential mechanism by which some individuals develop body size misperception-a risk factor for eating disorders, compulsive exercise behaviour and steroid abuse-while others do not.
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