Guardia- Contemporary study (Anorexia)

• Guardia et al (2012): Aim: To investigate if people with anorexia nervosa struggle gauging their body size in their ability to pass through a “door frame”.
• Guardia et al (2012): Aim: To see if this perception problem extended to other people, if their body misjudged.
• Guardia et al (2012): Results: Anorexia participants showed significant over-estimation of body size in themselves, judging that they would be unable to fit through door considerably larger than body.
• Guardia et al (2012) Results: Anorexia participants were much more accurate in predicting body size of “other person”.
• Guardia et al (2012): Results: Control- no significant difference between the two questions asked.
• Guardia et al (2012): Results: There was a correlation between the ‘possibility’ judgements made by the anorexia group and their pre-illness body weight/size.
• Guardia et al (2012) Conclusion: Patients haven’t adapted their internal body image to their ‘new’ body size. The brain still perceives body to be a larger size despite visual info. When people with anorexia lose weight CNS can’t update body image schema quickly enough for accurate representation of current body size.
• Guardia et al (2012): Conclusion: Patients who lost weight in the 6 months before the study conducted showed greater difference between own and other.
• Guardia et al (2012): Sample: 25 female patients in a clinic for eating disorders and 25 female healthy participants, control condition.
• Guardia et al (2012): Method: 51 door frame shapes projected on a wall in a random order, varying in size from 20cm - 80cm wide. They were each projected 4 times.
• Guardia et al (2012): Method: (1st perspective) Participant asked to predict if they could walk through each door frame, without turning to the side.
• Guardia et al (2012): Method: (3rd Perspective) Asked whether another female researcher standing in the room could fit through the frame. (similar BMI and shoulder width to control group)