Weight Salience Research Articles

Body Dissatisfaction Is Central to Military Eating Disorder Pathology: A Multi-Time-Point Network Analysis

Military membership may put individuals at risk for eating disorders (EDs) due to military specific risk factors such as strict physical fitness requirements, increased salience of weight, and exposure to trauma. Current ED assessments and treatments do not account for these military-specific risk factors. Empirically identifying maintaining factors for EDs can clarify which specific ED symptoms may be efficacious treatment targets for service members and veterans. Thus, we employed network analysis within a military sample to identify central ED symptoms and compare if these symptoms changed across three time-points. We hypothesized that body dissatisfaction and overexercise would be identified as central symptoms across all three time-points. Individuals in the military (73.7% male, 84.8% active duty, Mage = 30.74) completed the Eating Pathology Symptom Inventory (EPSI; Forbush et al., 2013) at baseline (n = 216), and at 1-month (n = 191) and 3-month follow-up (n = 176). We computed cross-sectional graphical LASSO networks and found that the most central symptoms were related to body dissatisfaction, overexercise, binge eating and diet pill/diuretics; these symptoms were largely stable across multiple time-points. Body dissatisfaction was identified as central across all three time-points and overexercise, binge eating, and diet pill/diuretics were identified as central across two timepoints. These findings are in line with network studies among men and clinical patients that find weight/shape concerns consistently emerge as central ED symptoms. Given that overexercise and diuretics are both central symptoms and frequently employed by military populations, providers should assess these symptoms and work to treat them in a culturally responsive way when they arise.

Weight Saliency search with Semantic Constraint for Neural Machine Translation attacks

Text adversarial attack is an effective way to improve the robustness of Neural Machine Translation (NMT) models. Existing NMT attack tasks are often completed by replacing words. However, most of previous works pursue a high attack success rate but produce semantic inconsistency sentences, leading to wrong translations even for humans. In this paper, we propose a Weight Saliency search with Semantic Constraint (WSSC) algorithm to make semantic consistency word modifications to the input sentence for black-box NMT attacks. Specifically, our WSSC has two major merits. First, it optimizes the word substitution with a word saliency method, which is helpful to reduce word replacement rate. Second, it constrains the objective function with a semantic similarity loss, ensuring every modification does not lead to significant semantic changes. We evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed WSSC by attacking three popular NMT models, i.e., T5, Marian, and BART, on three widely used datasets, i.e., WMT14, WMT16, and TED. Experimental results validate that our WSSC improves Attack Success Rate (ASR) by 4.02% and Semantic Similarity score (USE) by 1.28% on average. Besides, our WSSC also shows good properties in keeping grammar correctness and transfer attack.

MFS: A Brain-Inspired Memory Formation System for GAN

Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are subject to catastrophic forgetting when learning stream of data. Inspired by the knowledge of neuroscience, this article develops a memory formation system (MFS) to establish memory for GANs. MFS is composed of three modules, including the identifier, weights upgrade (WU), and weights reactivate (WR). These modules simulate the function of encoding, consolidating, and retrieving in memory formation of human. Identifier creates indexes to label continuous tasks and these indexes are used as a cue when the corresponding tasks are recalled. WU and WR work as synaptic consolidation and system consolidation, respectively. In WU, a novel method, weight saliency measure (WSM) is proposed to measure the saliency of weight. Valuable weights are protected and invaluable weights are released for update when GAN is trained for the new task. In WR, traditional data-replay methods are improved by selecting <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${k}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> representatives in each class and their feature vectors are restored. When pseudo data of this class are regenerated, only the samples with distance less than a threshold can be used in future training. Experimental results based on the testing of continual image generation and continual 3-D reconstruction show that MFS can establish a memory system to handle the catastrophic forgetting problem effectively.

The influence of psychological factors on postpartum weight retention 12 months post-birth

BackgroundDuring the first postpartum year 20% of women retain excessive weight from pregnancy (postpartum weight retention; PPWR), which predicts long-term overweight/obesity.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to explore the associations between psychological factors (depression, anxiety and stress symptoms and body attitudes) in late gestation and at 12-months postpartum with PPWR one-year post-birth.MethodsPregnant women (N = 176) completed questionnaires in early–mid pregnancy (Time 1; mean (SD) = 16.97 (1.35) weeks), late pregnancy (Time 2; mean (SD) = 33.33 (2.05) weeks), and one year postpartum (Time 3; mean (SD) = 53.12 (3.34) weeks). Women provided demographic characteristics, height and pre-pregnancy weight at Time 1. At Times 2 and 3, weight, depressive, anxiety and stress symptoms and body attitudes (salience of weight and shape, attractiveness, feeling fat, and strength and fitness) were assessed in addition to physiological, socio-contextual and lifestyle factors. Gestational weight gain and PPWR were calculated. Hierarchical linear regression models were conducted to explore variance in 12-month PPWR.ResultsOverall, models explained 26–39% variance in PPWR. Gestational weight gain in late pregnancy and low attractiveness at 12 months postpartum were the only variables associated significantly with 12-month PPWR.ConclusionWhile psychological factors did not appear to be important direct contributors to PPWR at 12 months, the overall contribution of all variables suggests that such factors may be implicated in a small and incremental way. Exploration of the interactions between variables will help unpack potential mechanisms of the development of PPWR at 12 months post-birth.

The relationship between antenatal body attitudes, pre-pregnancy body mass index, and gestational weight gain

Objectivesan estimated 50% of women experience excessive gestational weight gain (GWG). Maternal body attitudes are associated with GWG, however this relationship is complex and may differ based on pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) or gestational age. The aim of this study was to explore the moderating role of maternal pre-pregnancy BMI on the relationship between body attitudes in early-to-mid and late pregnancy and GWG. Design/Participantspregnant women less than 18 weeks gestation were recruited for a postal questionnaire study via Australian pregnancy online forums, pregnancy and parenting magazines, and antenatal clinics. In early-mid pregnancy (Time 1; mean (M) = 16.81 weeks gestation, standard deviation (SD) = 1.18), participants reported demographics, pre-pregnancy weight, height, and body attitudes (salience of weight and shape, attractiveness, strength and fitness and feeling fat). In late pregnancy, body attitudes (Time 2; M = 32.65 weeks gestation, SD = 0.91) and weight (Time 3; M = 37.15 weeks gestation, SD = 1.55) were reported. Pre-pregnancy BMI and total GWG were calculated. Moderation analyses were conducted. Findingsin early-mid pregnancy, pre-pregnancy BMI moderated the relationship between feeling fat and GWG. Pre-pregnancy BMI did not moderate the relationship between body attitudes and GWG for salience of weight and shape, attractiveness or strength and fitness in early-mid pregnancy. In late pregnancy, pre-pregnancy BMI moderated the relationship between all four body attitude facets (salience of weight and shape, attractiveness, feeling fat and strength and fitness) and GWG. Conclusion/Implications for practicethe relationship between body attitudes and GWG was moderated by pre-pregnancy BMI, particularly in late pregnancy. It is recommended that antenatal health care providers monitor women's body attitudes throughout pregnancy to aid in the management of healthy GWG and promote positive maternal and infant health outcomes. This is particularly important for women entering pregnancy with an underweight/normal weight BMI.

Caloric estimation of healthy and unhealthy foods in normal-weight, overweight and obese participants

Individuals make dietary choices each time they consume food or drink, and assign labels to each item, such as un/healthy, high/low in calories, high/low in nutrients. These labels are thought to be snap judgments based on prior, and often limited nutritional knowledge. The aim of this study was to examine the perception of the caloric content of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ foods. Participants (N=141) rated 53 food images on perceived healthiness/un-healthiness alongside the caloric content. Participants were subdivided into three groups: BMI (normal-weight, overweight, obese). Findings suggest that weight status impacts on participant's caloric estimation of foods perceived as healthy, but only marginally for unhealthy foods. However, not all foods were consistently labeled as healthy or unhealthy, on these occasions weight salience appears not to have influenced estimations of caloric content. Foods that confound the dichotomous labeling of healthy or unhealthy appear to gain a ‘branding’ that confers either greater or fewer calories than they actually contain, on these occasions weight salience does not appear to influence the labeling; implications are discussed.

Small-world Hopfield neural networks with weight salience priority and memristor synapses for digit recognition

A novel systematic design of associative memory networks is addressed in this paper, by incorporating both the biological small-world effect and the recently acclaimed memristor into the conventional Hopfield neural network. More specifically, the original fully connected Hopfield network is diluted by considering the small-world effect, based on a preferential connection removal criteria, i.e., weight salience priority. The generated sparse network exhibits comparable performance in associative memory but with much less connections. Furthermore, a hardware implementation scheme of the small-world Hopfield network is proposed using the experimental threshold adaptive memristor (TEAM) synaptic-based circuits. Finally, performance of the proposed network is validated by illustrative examples of digit recognition.

An experimental field study of weight salience and food choice

Laboratory research has found that individuals will consume more calories and make unhealthy food choices when in the presence of an overweight individual, sometimes even regardless of what that individual is eating. This study expanded these laboratory paradigms to the field to examine how weight salience influences eating in the real world. More specifically, we tested the threshold of the effect of weight salience of food choice to see if a more subtle weight cue (e.g., images) would be sufficient to affect food choice. Attendees (N = 262) at Obesity Week 2013, a weight-salient environment, viewed slideshows containing an image of an overweight individual, an image of a thin individual, or no image (text only), and then selected from complimentary snacks. Results of ordinal logistic regression analysis showed that participants who viewed the image of the overweight individual had higher odds of selecting the higher calorie snack compared to those who viewed the image of the thin individual (OR = 1.77, 95% CI = [1.04, 3.04]), or no image (OR = 2.42, 95% CI = [1.29, 4.54]). Perceiver BMI category did not moderate the influence of image on food choice, as these results occurred regardless of participant BMI. These findings suggest that in the context of societal weight salience, weight-related cues alone may promote unhealthy eating in the general public.

20대 여성의 비만도, 신체태도와 의복태도에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study was to analyze body mass index of women in their twenties and investigate the relationships of body attitude and clothing attitude. To achieve the purposes of this study, a questionnaire was conducted with 398 people from May 2 to May 30, 2013. The final data was analyzed with spss 18.0 program. The results were as follows: First, I found that body attitude had this order: Feeling fat, Lower body fatness, Salience of weight and shape, Attractiveness, Strength and fitness, and Body disparagement Secondly, there were significant differences of body attitude based on demographic characteristics and body mass index. Thirdly, I found that clothing attitude was classified into four factors of Personality pursuit, Body complement, Appearance ostentation, and Social approval. Fourthly, there were significant differences of clothing attitude based on demographic characteristics and body mass index. Fifthly, there were significant relations of body mass index, body attitude, and clothing attitude of women in their twenties. Thus, I found that body mass index and body attitude were related to clothing attitude.

Consequences of Making Weight: A Review of Eating Disorder Symptoms and Diagnoses in the United States Military.

Eating disorders are serious psychiatric illnesses associated with health problems. Such problems may compromise military performance, highlighting the need to establish the level of eating pathology that exists in military samples. This article qualitatively reviews prevalence estimates of eating disorder symptoms and diagnoses in military samples, providing nonmilitary estimates for context. Findings suggest that eating disorder symptoms are prevalent in cadets and active duty service members, especially when using self-report measures. The increased salience of weight in the military and increased exposure to trauma may influence risk for eating disorders. Alternatively, individuals at risk for eating disorders may self-select into the military. Overall, this review suggests that eating disorder symptoms are common in military samples and that further research is warranted.

Body Image and Gestational Weight Gain: A Prospective Study

Approximately 50% of Australian adult women of childbearing age are overweight or obese, and, when pregnant, the majority gain excessive weight; this is also the case in the United States and other developed nations. High gestational weight gain (GWG) is the strongest predictor of maternal overweight/obesity postbirth and is also associated with an increased risk of childhood obesity. Understanding factors that contribute to excessive GWG is vital in combating obesity. The aim of the current study was to examine whether body image attitudes (eg, feeling fat, attractive, or strong and fit, and salience of weight and shape) predict GWG. Pregnant women, recruited through advertisements on pregnancy online forums and parenting magazines, completed questionnaires assessing body image, demographic variables, and GWG. The Body Attitudes Questionnaire assessed body image in early-to-middle, middle, and late pregnancy (mean of 16.8, 24.7, and 33.0 weeks' gestation, respectively). Total GWG was calculated by subtracting self-reported pre pregnancy weight from self-reported weight at 36.8 weeks' gestation. A total of 150 pregnant women responded to the study's advertisements, and 72% (n = 108) took part. After controlling for pre pregnancy body mass index (BMI), lower attractiveness in early-to-middle pregnancy was associated with higher GWG. In late pregnancy, women who had the lowest feelings of fatness had greater GWG. Body image attitudes earlier in pregnancy did not predict whether GWG recommendations were exceeded. Women of higher BMI were more likely to gain excessive weight. The findings suggest that the type and timing of pregnancy, body attitudes, and the time of pregnancy when they are noted, predict GWG. However, more research in the area is needed, including assessment of the relationship between body image concerns, GWG, and other psychosocial factors. We recommend that midwives monitor body image concerns in pregnancy to help address factors affecting GWG in at-risk women.

Psychometric Testing of the Feelings and Thoughts About Weight Scale on Postpartum Women in Taiwan

The purpose of this study was to establish the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Feelings and Thoughts About Weight (CFATAW) scale and evaluate the ability of this scale to assess weight-related distress in Taiwanese women after childbirth. A cross-sectional, descriptive design was used to recruit 252 postpartum women who had given birth 6 to 9 months previously. Categorical data analysis and exploratory factor analysis were used to analyze the data. Internal consistency, content validity index, and factor analysis all indicated CFATAW to be a valid and reliable instrument for use with Taiwanese postpartum women. Factor analysis yielded a two-factor solution of weight distress and weight salience, with an explained variance of 57.97%. Further, women who were currently overweight scored 2.75, 2.44, and 1.87 times higher than their nonoverweight counterparts, respectively, in the total CFATAW scale scores and scores on distress and salience subscales. Women with postpartum weight retention faced a 2.33, 2.53, and 2.42 times greater risk, respectively, of scoring higher on the total scale and two subscales. The results of this study indicated that the CFATAW can be used by maternity and community health nurses to assess weight-related distresses in women after childbirth. The research results could be useful in developing interventions to assist women in Taiwan with the problem of postpartum weight retention.

Perceived healthiness of food. If it's healthy, you can eat more!

The main aim of this study was to investigate the effects of food-related beliefs about the healthiness of foods, restrained eating, and weight salience on actual food intake during an ad libitum snack. In a 2 (healthy vs. unhealthy) by 2 (restrained vs. unrestrained eaters) by 2 (weight salient vs. not salient) factorial design, 99 female undergraduate students were invited to taste and rate oatmeal-raisin cookies. Dietary restraint and weight salience did not influence snack intake, but participants ate about 35% more when the snack was regarded as healthy than when it was seen as unhealthy. Ratings of the snack food's “healthiness,” “capacity to affect weight” and “appropriateness in a healthy menu” also indicated that the “healthy” manipulation was effective. In addition, the “weight salience” manipulation appears to influence perceptions about food differently in restrained versus unrestrained eaters, in that restrained eaters rated the snack food more negatively than unrestrained eaters did when they received weight feedback before eating. Beliefs about the healthiness of foods may thus be of great relevance to both food intake and weight gain.

Examination of a multi-factorial model of body-related experiences during pregnancy: The relationships among physical symptoms, sleep quality, depression, self-esteem, and negative body attitudes

The aim of this cross-sectional study was to investigate relationships among women's body attitudes, physical symptoms, self-esteem, depression, and sleep quality during pregnancy. Pregnant women ( N = 215) at 15–25 weeks gestation completed a questionnaire including four body image subscales assessing self-reported feeling fat, attractiveness, strength/fitness, and salience of weight and shape. Women reported on 29 pregnancy-related physical complaints, and completed the Beck Depression Inventory, Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale, and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. In regressions, controlling for retrospective reports of body image, more frequent and intense physical symptoms were related to viewing the self as less strong/fit, and to poorer sleep quality and more depressive symptoms. In a multi-factorial model extending previous research, paths were found from sleep quality to depressive symptoms to self-esteem; self-esteem was found to be a mediator associated with lower scores on feeling fat and salience of weight and shape, and on higher perceived attractiveness.

How Well Do Women Adapt to Changes in Their Body Size and Shape across the Course of Pregnancy?

This study examined body image across pregnancy. Pregnant women ( N = 158) completed measures of general attractiveness, feeling fat, fitness and strength, salience of weight and shape, and ideal and current body size at pre-pregnancy (retrospective), and in early, middle and late pregnancy. Body image was found to be fairly stable across pregnancy such that women who started with greater body concerns maintained them over time. Although women were least satisfied with their stomach size at late pregnancy, women's ideal body shape increased in parallel with increases in body size. Women with the most body concerns reported more depressive symptoms, tendency towards dieting, and smoking during pregnancy suggesting they were at greater risk in terms of health and well-being during pregnancy.

Predictors of Body Image During the First Year Postpartum: A Prospective Study

ABSTRACT This longitudinal study investigated body image changes and possible predictors of multiple dimensions of body image in the first year postpartum. Women (N = 79) who had been followed up since early pregnancy (including reporting retrospectively about pre-pregnancy and concurrently about late pregnancy) completed questionnaires at 6 weeks, 6 months, and 12 months postpartum that focused on body image measures of feeling fat, attractiveness, salience of shape and weight, and strength and fitness. Women experienced greater body dissatisfaction in the postpartum in comparison to pre-pregnancy and late pregnancy, with 6 months postpartum being the time of most body concern. In ratings of perceived current and ideal figure size, women decreased their current size ratings over the postpartum period; however, ratings of ideal figure remained stable over the three time points. The findings also revealed that higher frequency of physical comparison tendencies at 6 weeks postpartum, and depressive symptoms and dieting behaviours at 6 months postpartum were predictors of body image of different types at 12 months post birth.

Sex, Body-Esteem and Self-Esteem

This study investigated the relationship between body-esteem and self-esteem among 215 young men and women (ages 18 to 25 years). It was expected that concern with weight and shape would be strongly associated with women's self-esteem, while men's self-esteem would be more closely linked to concerns about their fitness. Multiple regression analyses indicated that perceived attractiveness and the salience of weight and shape were significant predictors of self-esteem among women. Among men, the significant predictors of self-esteem were perceived attractiveness, body disparagement, and perceived strength and fitness.

Distributed fault tolerance in optimal interpolative nets

The recursive training algorithm for the optimal interpolative (OI) classification network is extended to include distributed fault tolerance. The conventional OI Net learning algorithm leads to network weights that are nonoptimally distributed (in the sense of fault tolerance). Fault tolerance is becoming an increasingly important factor in hardware implementations of neural networks. But fault tolerance is often taken for granted in neural networks rather than being explicitly accounted for in the architecture or learning algorithm. In addition, when fault tolerance is considered, it is often accounted for using an unrealistic fault model (e.g., neurons that are stuck on or off rather than small weight perturbations). Realistic fault tolerance can be achieved through a smooth distribution of weights, resulting in low weight salience and distributed computation. Results of trained OI Nets on the Iris classification problem show that fault tolerance can be increased with the algorithm presented in this paper.

Optimally distributed computation in augmented networks

The concept is introduced of `optimally distributed computation&apos; in feed-forward neural networks via regularisation of weight saliency. By constraining the relative importance of the parameters, computation can be distributed thinly and evenly throughout the network. It is proposed that this will have beneficial effects on fault-tolerance performance and generalisation ability in augmented network architectures. These theoretical predictions are verified by simulation experiments on two problems; one artificial and the other a `real-world&apos; task. Regularisation terms are presented for distributing neural computation optimally.

Toward optimally distributed computation.

This article introduces the concept of optimally distributed computation in feedforward neural networks via regularization of weight saliency. By constraining the relative importance of the parameters, computation can be distributed thinly and evenly throughout the network. We propose that this will have beneficial effects on fault-tolerance performance and generalization ability in large network architectures. These theoretical predictions are verified by simulation experiments on two problems: one artificial and the other a real-world task. In summary, this article presents regularization terms for distributing neural computation optimally.