Abstract: Despite evidence indicating fatness and thinness information are processed differently among weight preoccupied and eating disordered individuals, the exact nature of these attentional biases is not clear.
In this research, eye movement (EM) tracking assessed biases in specific component processes of visual attention (i.e., orientation, detection, and maintenance of gaze) in relation to body related pictures among 20 women with fat negative physical self (FNPS) and 20 body satisfied young women. Eye movements were recorded while participants completed a dot-probe task that featured fatness-neutral and thinness-neutral picture pairs with the stimuli being presented for 2000 ms.
Women with FNPS showed different attentional bias pattern toward fat- and thin-related pictures, with vigilance-maintenance pattern toward fat body pictures and vigilance pattern toward thin body pictures. Specifically, compared to controls, women with FNPS were more likely to direct their initial gaze toward fatness pictures, had a shorter mean latency of first fixation on both fatness and thinness pictures, had longer first fixation and total gaze duration on fatness pictures. Reaction time data showed a maintenance bias towards fatness pictures and difficulty in disengagement from both fatness and thinness pictures among the women with FNPS.
In sum, results indicated women with FNPS show initial orienting, speeded detection and initial and total maintenance biases towards fat body pictures in addition to a speeded detection in relation to thin body pictures, which partly supported Vitousek and Hollon’s (1990) cognitive model.

Key words: negative physical self, attentional vigilance, attentional maintenance, eye movements