Body Awareness: Construct and Self-Report Measures

Abstract

ObjectivesHeightened body awareness can be adaptive and maladaptive. Improving body awareness has been suggested as an approach for treating patients with conditions such as chronic pain, obesity and post-traumatic stress disorder. We assessed the psychometric quality of selected self-report measures and examined their items for underlying definitions of the construct.Data sourcesPubMed, PsychINFO, HaPI, Embase, Digital Dissertations Database.Review methodsAbstracts were screened; potentially relevant instruments were obtained and systematically reviewed. Instruments were excluded if they exclusively measured anxiety, covered emotions without related physical sensations, used observer ratings only, or were unobtainable. We restricted our study to the proprioceptive and interoceptive channels of body awareness. The psychometric properties of each scale were rated using a structured evaluation according to the method of McDowell. Following a working definition of the multi-dimensional construct, an inter-disciplinary team systematically examined the items of existing body awareness instruments, identified the dimensions queried and used an iterative qualitative process to refine the dimensions of the construct.ResultsFrom 1,825 abstracts, 39 instruments were screened. 12 were included for psychometric evaluation. Only two were rated as high standard for reliability, four for validity. Four domains of body awareness with 11 sub-domains emerged. Neither a single nor a compilation of several instruments covered all dimensions. Key domains that might potentially differentiate adaptive and maladaptive aspects of body awareness were missing in the reviewed instruments.ConclusionExisting self-report instruments do not address important domains of the construct of body awareness, are unable to discern between adaptive and maladaptive aspects of body awareness, or exhibit other psychometric limitations. Restricting the construct to its proprio- and interoceptive channels, we explore the current understanding of the multi-dimensional construct and suggest next steps for further research.

Altered Motor Control in Athletes with Low Back Pain: a Literature Review

“…This explains the flexion pattern cyclists staying in flexion during cycling, the cricketers leaning over onto the painful side even more towards end-range as well as the rotation group (reporting pain on rotation) doing more rotation than the painfree group. In other words, athletes do not seem to automatically be assuming the best movement pattern and this might be explained by poor body awareness (46) and poor proprioception (47). We need to acknowledge that psychological factors could explain some MCI too (48), and more studies are needed to clarify the issue in athletes with LBP.…”

Investigation of relationship between body awareness, pain, emotional status and quality of life with healty people

“…Mehling ve ark. [12] artan vücut farkındalığının obezite, posttravmatik stres ve kronik ağrısı olan hastaların hayata uyum sürecini iyi yönde etkilediğini ortaya koymuşlardır. Smith ve ark.…”

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Using music as a signal for biofeedback

“…The complete version of the questionnaire includes five subscales related to stress and perception of bodily responses. The awareness subscale of the BPQ however has in past studies been demonstrated to be a useful measure of self-rated bodily awareness (Critchley et al, 2004;Mehling et al, 2009), and was here used to assess possible differences in interoceptive awareness between participants.…”