A negative subjective experience with the own body is one driving mechanism underlying the development and maintenance of eating disorders. A pronounced body dissatisfaction is also a predictor of health-damaging behaviors such as diet restrictions and suicidal ideation in adolescents.
According to the cognitive model of eating behaviors, body-related attention is involved in the maintenance of body dissatisfaction and empirical studies have established that several body-dissatisfied groups (e.g., patients with eating disorders, body-dissatisfied women, restrained eaters) exhibit a preferred attentional processing of self-declared ugly and weight-related body parts belonging to their own bodies. However, although pictures or mirror representations of the own body may reflect participants’ actual appearance, they might have a different cognitive schema of their own body. To investigate body-related attention and schemata, manipulating a person’s bodily appearance is a promising and well-suited tool. In virtual reality, participants can embody a self-avatar from the first-person perspective with plausible real-time animation according to real movements (self-avatar body swapping). Eye-tracking data from a previous study suggested an attentional bias of body-dissatisfied normal-weight women when embodying an overweight self-avatar, but not a normal-weight avatar. However, findings on body dissatisfaction and embodiment were inconclusive.
In this cross-sectional experiment, an advanced virtual reality scenario with photorealistic self-avatars and more comprehensive multimodal (visuo-motor, visuo-tactile, and neural) interactions is employed to enhance the illusion of body swapping. A systematic evaluation of the additional immersive factors and the enhancement of the body swapping illusion by neuromodulation of attention-related and control-related brain regions is planned. Results will inform future interventions in eating disorder patients with virtual reality therapies.
Project specific tasks
- Developing study materials and procedures
- Supporting recruitment, data collection and piloting in virtual reality
- Analyses of piloting data (experiential, eye-tracking, or physiological data)
- Master theses can be written in German or English
If interested, please contact philipp.schroederspam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de