Guardia Study

Question 1

Aim of Guardia Study

Answer 1

• To investigate whether AN patients find it difficult to gauge their own body size and whether those difficulties extended to their perception of others

Question 1

Measures

Answer 1

• The participants completed:
  BSQ (Body Shape Questionnaire) - Measures body satisfaction
  EDI-2 (Eating Disorder Inventory-2) - Measures weight and shape concerns such as drive for thinness

Question 2

Participants

Answer 2

• 25 patients from a clinic for eating disorders in France who all met the DSM 5 criteria for AN and 25 healthy female controls
• Each group was matched for age, sex and level of education
• 12 Restricting Type and 13 Binging type

Question 3

Procedure

Answer 3

• A door frame was projected onto a wall to give an illusion of an opening that participants could walk through
• There were 51 different width shapes were projected onto the walls from 30-80 cm wide
• The projection were presented in a random order, each presented 4 times to each participants and was asked to predict whether they could walk through at normal speed without turning
• Then they were asked whether the female researcher standing in the room could fit through the frame, the researcher had a similar BMI and shoulder width to the control group

Question 4

Finding

Answer 4

• AN patients had a significantly higher score on EDI and median BSQ
• AN patients showed significantly overestimation of body size in themselves, that they would be unable to fit through, however the door frames were considerably bigger than them
• However they accurate predicted the body size of the other person in the room
• Evidence from the control group showed that there was no significant difference in their ability to predict the pass ability

Question 5

Conclusion

Answer 5

• Evidence suggests that AN patients still perceive their body size to be larger despite visual information
• Explain why patients with AN continue to see themselves bigger than they are and strive to lose weight due to their brain not perceiving their current size

Question 6

Strength of Guardia

Answer 6

• High internal validity of the study was benefited through the matching of the participants
  -The researchers matched the anorexia group and the control group for age and education level
  -This was to ensure the only difference between the two groups is that one group was anorexia and the other was healthy
• Therefore conveying that the differences between the groups pass ability ration was due to the presence of anorexia in more group affecting how they perceive bodies
• The results that AN patients having a distorted perception of their body size has been replicated
• Schneider et al found that patients with eating disorders overestimated their body parts on average about 30%, particularly their thighs and waist compared to healthy controls
• Demonstrating that findings that AN patients overestimate their body size is reliable

Question 7

Weakness of Guardia

Answer 7

• There is potential issue with the validity of the judging tasks
• Making visual judgement of a person’s ability to pass through a virtual door frame is different to walk through the projected shape
• An alternative could be to have participants approach the opening to see if they walk as if they can fit through it or if they begin to turn or slow down as they will not fit in
• The current experimental method may not demonstrate the body image the patients have in their mind, as the finding doesn’t represent the mental image of anorexic patients