Face Perception in Body Dysmorphic Disorder

• Applicant: Dr. Viktoria Ritter
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2011 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 190984601

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is characterized by an excessive preoccupation with either one or more imagined or slight defect(s) in physical appearance. The defect often pertains to facial appearance. According to cognitive-behavioral models individuals with BDD exhibit a biased processing of faces. Cognitive factors such as a selective attention on single details, an increased discrimination of aesthetically relevant facial features and a negative appraisal of the defect may play an important role in the development and maintenance of the disorder. In addition, obsessive checking rituals (e.g. mirror checking) and negative emotions lead to significant impairment. However, it still remains unclear what mechanisms underlie that aberrant face perception. Neuropsychological and fMRI studies indicate detail encoding and an analytic style of perception. Investigating perceptual adaptation to faces could offer a new insight in the underlying perceptual abnormalities in BDD. Deficits in adaptative face-coding might influence the visual perception, the cognitive appraisal of facial features, and could have important implications for interventions of cognitive therapy such as videofeedback. The purpose of the proposed project is to further investigate 1) whether individuals with BDD exhibit deficits in perceptual adaptation to unfamiliar spatially and texturally transformed faces, 2) whether adaptation to the own untransformed face as well as to unfamiliar untransformed faces alters face perception, and 3) whether configural/holistic processing of the own face as well as of unfamiliar faces is altered in BDD using event-related potentials (ERPs).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Persons: Professor Dr. Stefan R. Schweinberger; Professor Dr. Ulrich Stangier