Body Weight Schematicity and its Effects on General Cognitive Functions
Date
1995
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
This experiment assessed body schematicity's effects on general cognitive functioning. Both schematics and aschematics for body weight performed three cognitive tasks. A lexical decision task presenting weight-related and non-weight-related stimuli was used to assess perceptual abilities and speed of processing. To explore interpretive behavior, an ambiguous stimuli task required subjects to write a stories about two ambiguous scenes. Finally, subjects watched a film containing both weight-related and non-weight-related items. A delayed recognition task was used to examine memory. Several analyses of variance revealed that, on a particular dimension, schematics and aschematics process information differently. More specifically, body weight schematics perceived more weight-related words and processed this information more quickly. They also tended to interpret situations as weight-related and had higher hit and false alarm rates for weight-related information presented in the memory task. In contrast, aschematics did not show such differential cognitive abilities as a function of information type. In addition, a multiple regression analysis revealed that performances on several of the tasks positively correlate to schematicity level. These findings extend the previous schema and body image literatures, and provide a basis for extensive research in these areas.