Developing a new measure of retrospective body dissatisfaction: links to postnatal bonding and psychological well-being.

BACKGROUND: Pregnancy is a transformative time for women and their bodies, and therefore thoughts and feelings about the body understandably change during this period. While previous research has established the impact of body dissatisfaction on factors like antenatal attachment and maternal mental health, there is a notable gap in understanding its long-term effects on postnatal factors. This is often due to high attrition rates in longitudinal studies. Using retrospective measures could address this issue, however a measure of retrospective pregnant body dissatisfaction has not yet been identified. AIMS: This paper aimed to create a retrospective measure of pregnancy body dissatisfaction by adapting a previously validated measure. It also aimed to investigate the relationship between retrospective accounts of body dissatisfaction during pregnancy and postnatal anxiety, depression, and bonding. METHOD: Cross-sectional online survey data was collected from women postnatally (N = 404). FINDINGS: An exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis identified a two-factor model of retrospective body dissatisfaction, adapted from the Body Understanding Measure for Pregnancy Scale, which was equivalent to two of the original subscales. Using this factor structure, linear regressions demonstrated that higher levels of retrospective pregnant body dissatisfaction were associated with elevated rates of postnatal anxiety and depression and lower bonding scores. CONCLUSIONS: This study successfully established a measure for assessing retrospective pregnant body dissatisfaction, potentially aiding future research. Additionally, it has highlighted the link between pregnant body dissatisfaction and postnatal levels of depression, anxiety, and bonding. Thus, improving the pregnant bodily experience may have the potential to enhance the postnatal experience.

Body understanding measure for pregnancy scale (BUMPs): Cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric properties among Brazilian pregnant women.

The Body Understanding Measure for Pregnancy Scale (BUMPs) is a scale developed and validated for British pregnant women to assess body satisfaction during pregnancy. The aim of this study was to perform a cross-cultural adaptation and verify the psychometric properties of BUMPs for Brazilian adult pregnant women. The cross-cultural adaptation was performed using translation, back-translation, expert committee, expert analysis, and pre-testing, which showed easy comprehension by pregnant women. Psychometric analyses were evaluated in a sample of 618 pregnant women (31.08 ± 4.94 years old). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses resulted in 19 items and three factors, with satisfactory fit indices. BUMPs presented an invariant measurement across white vs. nonwhite women and across the three gestational trimesters. BUMPs showed good indicators of convergent, internal consistency, and test-retest reproducibility validity. It was concluded that the Brazilian version of BUMPs has adequate psychometric properties for Brazilian pregnant women, being an excellent instrument for analyzing body satisfaction in this population, facilitating additional investigations into these constructs.

Bonding with bump: Interoceptive sensibility moderates the relationship between pregnancy body satisfaction and antenatal attachment.

PROBLEM: There is limited understanding and contradictory results regarding the contribution of the pregnant bodily experience to antenatal attachment. BACKGROUND: Antenatal attachment is an important aspect of pregnancy, which has been linked with positive maternal and infant outcomes. Given the profound physical process of pregnancy, it is likely that bodily experience is implicated in antenatal attachment, with research supporting the involvement of pregnancy body (dis)satisfaction. However, previous research reveals conflicting results and has only focused on exteroceptive bodily experience (appearance) rather than internal physiological sensations (interoception). AIM: To examine the relative contributions of both external and internal bodily experience in antenatal attachment. METHODS: This cross-sectional study collected online survey data from 159 pregnant participants with measures capturing interoceptive sensibility (subjective experience of interoception), pregnancy body dissatisfaction and antenatal attachment. FINDINGS: We replicated previous findings that pregnancy body dissatisfaction is related to antenatal attachment. However, the relationship between pregnancy body dissatisfaction and antenatal attachment was moderated by worry about interoceptive signals. The interoceptive construct of body trust was most strongly associated with antenatal attachment. DISCUSSION: The results suggest that interoception is important for antenatal attachment, particularly feelings of body trust. Moreover, for individuals who were less worried about bodily sensations, high levels of body dissatisfaction were associated with low attachment scores, whilst for those who were more concerned about these sensations, the relationship between body dissatisfaction and antenatal attachment was mitigated. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that focusing on internal sensations may be a protective strategy against pregnancy body dissatisfaction to strengthen maternal bonds.

Multisensory processing and proprioceptive plasticity during resizing illusions.

Bodily resizing illusions typically use visual and/or tactile inputs to produce a vivid experience of one's body changing size. Naturalistic auditory input (an input that reflects the natural sounds of a stimulus) has been used to increase illusory experience during the rubber hand illusion, whilst non-naturalistic auditory input can influence estimations of finger length. We aimed to use a non-naturalistic auditory input during a hand-based resizing illusion using augmented reality, to assess whether the addition of an auditory input would increase both subjective illusion strength and measures of performance-based tasks. Forty-four participants completed the following three conditions: no finger stretching, finger stretching without tactile feedback and finger stretching with tactile feedback. Half of the participants had an auditory input throughout all the conditions, whilst the other half did not. After each condition, the participants were given one of the following three performance tasks: stimulated (right) hand dot touch task, non-stimulated (left) hand dot touch task, and a ruler judgement task. Dot tasks involved participants reaching for the location of a virtual dot, whereas the ruler task concerned estimates of the participant's own finger on a ruler whilst the hand was hidden from view. After all trials, the participants completed a questionnaire capturing subjective illusion strength. The addition of auditory input increased subjective illusion strength for manipulations without tactile feedback but not those with tactile feedback. No facilitatory effects of audio were found for any performance task. We conclude that adding auditory input to illusory finger stretching increased subjective illusory experience in the absence of tactile feedback but did not affect performance-based measures.

Distinct neural signatures of multimodal resizing illusions.

Illusory body resizing typically uses multisensory integration to change the perceived size of a body part. Previous studies associate these multisensory body illusions with frontal theta oscillations and parietal gamma oscillations for dis-integration and integration of multisensory signals, respectively. However, recent studies also support illusory changes of embodiment from unimodal visual stimuli. This preregistered study (N = 48) investigated differences between multisensory visuo-tactile and unimodal visual resizing illusions using EEG, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the neural underpinnings of resizing illusions in a healthy population. We hypothesised (1) stronger illusion in multisensory compared to unimodal, and unimodal compared to incongruent (dis-integration) conditions, (2) greater parietal gamma during multisensory compared to unimodal, and (3) greater frontal theta during incongruent compared to baseline conditions. Subjective Illusory results partially support Hypothesis 1, showing a stronger illusion in multisensory compared to unimodal conditions, but finding no significant difference comparing unimodal to incongruent conditions. Results partially supported EEG hypotheses, finding increased parietal gamma activity comparing multisensory to unimodal visual conditions, happening at a later stage of the illusion when compared to previous rubber hand illusion EEG findings, whilst also finding increased parietal theta activity when comparing incongruent to non-illusion conditions. While results demonstrated that only 27% of participants experienced the stretching illusion with unimodal visual stimuli compared to 73% of participants experiencing the stretching illusion in the multisensory condition, further analysis suggested that those who experience visual-only illusions exhibit a different neural signature to those who do not, with activity focussed around frontal and parietal regions early on in the illusory manipulation, compared to activity focussed more over parietal regions and at a later point in the illusory manipulation for the full sample of participants. Our results replicate previous subjective experience findings and support the importance of multisensory integration for illusory changes in perceived body size, whilst adding to our understanding of the temporal onset of multisensory integration within resizing illusions, differing from that of rubber hand illusions.