برداشت از خود در کودکان 3-5 ساله: تحقیقات مقدماتی در اوایل ظهور نارضایتی از بدن

The main objective of this study was to investigate normal weight and overweight preschool children's ability to understand conceptualizations of body image and their association with parental perceptions of their child's body. One hundred and forty-four children aged 3–5 years were interviewed (68 girls and 76 boys) regarding their body image and their satisfaction with such. Parents completed a questionnaire that probed socio-demographic characteristics as well as their perceptions of their child's body image. Results showed that (1) children's misperceptions corresponded to those held by their parents. Specifically, overweight children and their parents underestimated the child's body size. (2) Gender differences in body dissatisfaction were consistently observed and were similar to those seen in adolescents and adults. It was determined that children's inaccuracies were not a result of developmental limits, that is, the participants’ inability to understand the concepts measured.

Disturbances in body image, inaccurate estimates of actual body size and the degree of satisfaction with one's body have been listed as diagnostic features in a number of psychopathologies including anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa (Bell et al., 1986, Cash and Pruzinsky, 2004, Farrell et al., 2006 and Williamson et al., 1999). The perceptions of one's morphology and the dissatisfaction related to such are often found among those who are affected by obesity (Schwartz & Brownell, 2004) but are also observed in non-clinical populations (Farrell et al., 2006).