that served as proxies for the child’s current weight/body size.
Two series of pictures were created (a boy and a girl) representing three weight categories
(underweight, normal, and overweight).
To create these pictures, digitized photos of a 3.5-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl, who were classified as having a normal Body Mass Index (BMI in the 50th percentile), were employed. These two normal-weighted male and female child models were chosen because their somato types were similar; they were good
representations of average body sizes for this age group and they
showed very similar physical features (although they were not siblings).
The photos were transformed by a graphic artist to produce
an approximate representation of the child’s body size if they were
underweight and overweight(respectively, atthe 5th and 95th percentiles,
see Appendix A). These silhouettes were printed on a large
cardboard format and presented simultaneously to the child. The
child was asked to indicate which among the three figures, “looked
likeher/him” and“whichone she/he wouldlike to look like” (figures
were coded 1 ‘underweight’; 2 ‘normal weight’; 3 ‘overweight’).
The two research assistants coded the child’s level of understanding
for the two first tasks as follows: 2 for a correct answer
with no help offered by the experimenter; 1 for a correct answer
that was provided with help from the experimenter (this which
consisted in repeating the question and pointing out each figure
saying “which one among those looks the same like as. . .”; and 0
for a non-response or incorrect answer. The level of help required
for the child body image tasks was also recordedใ