Body image disturbance, interoceptive sensibility and the body schema across female adulthood: A pre-registered study

Women with high levels of body image disturbance (BID) typically show altered processing of internal bodily signals (interoception) and also demonstrate disturbances in the body schema: an implicit sensorimotor representation of the body, including mental simulation of a movement such as motor imagery. We examined the relationship between BID, interoceptive sensibility (IS) and the body schema across different age cohorts of adult women. 1214 women took part from the following age groups: Young adults (18-24), Adults (25-39), Middle-aged adults (40-59), and Older aged adults (60-75). BID was indexed by questionnaires measuring body objectification, state, and trait body dissatisfaction. IS was measured using the MAIA-2. The body schema was indexed through a body-based motor imagery task. Results show that while body objectification and trait body dissatisfaction decreased from young to older adulthood, state body dissatisfaction showed a marked increase. A negative relationship between IS and BID across all age groups was also evidenced. Finally, age, BID and orientation of the presented body were significant predictors of the time taken to make an embodied transformation. These findings suggest that disruptions in body image have the potential to impact implicit sensorimotor representations of the body, even in non-clinical populations across female adulthood.