Body Representation in Children and Adolescents

The purpose of the present study was to determine if children and adolescents are able to map the body parts of other children and adolescents on to the representation of their own body parts and if age influences this mapping. To this end, participants completed a body-part compatibility task where responses were executed to coloured targets (relevant feature) presented over the hand or foot (irrelevant feature) of separate male models of different ages (7, 11, and 15 years of age). It was found that body-part compatibility effects emerged for both the 10-12 and 13-16 year old age groups. No body-part compatibility effects were found for the 7-9 year old age group. Most interestingly, the body-part compatibility effects for both the 10-12 and 13-16 year old age groups occurred when viewing models of their own peers. Overall, the results indicate that the body-part matching process is sensitive to social factors.M.Sc