Virtual Reality Lab - Universitat de Barcelona

In the maintenance of anorexia nervosa (AN) various variables such as body dissatisfaction intervene. This has been linked to an attentional bias towards the physical appearance of the body over other information. Studying visual behaviour can be crucial to the origin of this dissatisfaction. The objective of this study is to see the help of Virtual Reality (RV) and the eye-tracker device if there are differences between people with high dissatisfaction or low dissatisfaction at the time of looking at the different parts of the body.

The sample consists of 44 female university students divided into two groups according to the degree of high or low dissatisfaction. They were exposed to three virtual avatars and the visual behaviour was measured in the three assessment times. The first avatar had the participant's own figure, the second had an increase of the figure of 40% and the third one again had the figure of the participant.

With the help of the SPSS program, an ANOVA two-way mix was performed, where there was no significant group-time interaction.

We have been able to prove that exposing someone to a type of avatar conditioned the amount and frequency of fixation time independently of the group. Also, the 3rd avatar was the one where the participants put more attention at the weight-related parts.