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Handedness differences in body image distortion and eating disorder symptomatology
Author(s) -
Christman Stephen D.,
Bentle Michelle,
Niebauer Christopher L.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
international journal of eating disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.785
H-Index - 138
eISSN - 1098-108X
pISSN - 0276-3478
DOI - 10.1002/eat.20357
Subject(s) - psychology , hand preference , eating disorders , right hemisphere , preference , developmental psychology , laterality , lateralization of brain function , cerebral hemisphere , audiology , clinical psychology , cognitive psychology , neuroscience , medicine , statistics , mathematics
Objective: Previous research has shown decreased access in strong right‐handers to processes lateralized to the right cerebral hemisphere. The current studies tested the hypothesis that decreased access to right hemisphere processes, as indexed by increasing strength of right‐hand preference, is associated with deficits in body image representation. Method: Experiment 1 measured individual's perceived versus actual BMI values. Experiment 2 involved the administration of the Eating Disorders Inventory‐2 (EDI‐2). Results: Experiment 1 revealed that strong right‐handedness was associated with a larger discrepancy between actual and perceived BMI, relative to mixed‐handedness. In Experiment 2, strong‐handers scored higher on the EDI‐2 than did mixed‐handers. Conclusion: The results indicate that strong degrees of handedness are associated with deficits in accurate representation of body image and with increased eating disorder symptomatology in a nonclinical sample. Implications for research into the neural bases of eating disorders are discussed. © 2006 by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Eat Disord 2007