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Show 244 Lauren Forrest Individuals with eating disorders often suffer from severe body dissatisfaction and distorted perceptions of the body (Bruch, 1969; Cash & Deagle, 1997; Farrell, Lee, & Shafran, 2005). Though populations with eating disorders may perceive their body sizes differently, most of the work has investigated body misperception using measures assessing memory for body shape and size rather than actual perception (see Smeets, 1997). This research examined whether distorted per-ceptions in individuals with eating disorders are truly perceptual, and whether these biases occur for all parts of one's body or only those areas often associated with the most body dissatisfaction (e.g., hips and stomach). Clinical participants (individuals with a history of anorexia nervosa, bu-limia nervosa, and/or eating disorder not otherwise specified; (N=28) completed five perceptual measures of action capability that involved judging whether they could 1) walk straight through a doorway (passability), 2) walk sideways through a doorway (sidestepping), 3) pick up a box (grasping), 4) jump a distance (jumping), and 5) walk under a horizontal barrier (height). Eating disorder assessments included the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT), the Food-Related Emotion assess-ment (FRE), and the Thought-Shape Fusion questionnaire (TSF). Additionally, Body Mass Index (BMI) was calculated for each participant. Perceptual judgments of passability significantly posi-tively correlated with EAT (r=.350, p<.05) and TSF scores (r=.259, p<.1), as well as height (r=.295, p<.1). Perceptual judgments of sidestepping significantly positively correlated with TSF scores, (r=.305, p<.1) height (r=.355, p<.05), and BMI (r=.345, p<.05). Height significantly positively corre-lated with EAT (r=.334, p<.05) and TSF scores (r=.255, p<.1) while jumping significantly negatively correlated with EAT (r=-.282, p<.1) and TSF scores (r=-.268, p<.1). The results suggest that eating disorder assessment scores correlate with perceptual measures (passability, sidestepping, and jumping) that reference specific areas of the body (hips and stomach) for which clinical partici-pants are sensitive as well as their overall weight; participants may have used this information to decide whether they can perform certain actions. These preliminary findings suggest eating disorder screening tools should include perceptual measures, which could provide a method for earlier detection of such disorders. THE ROLE OF PERCEPTION IN EATING DISORDERS Lauren Forrest (Jeanine Stefanucci, Justine Reel) Department of Psychology Department of Health Promotion and Education University of Utah honors college spring 2012 Jeanine Stefanucci Justine Reel |