Raquel Barbosa

Attachments and body image: An exploratory model | As relações de vinculação e a imagem corporal: Exploração de um modelo

The present study explored the differential effects of the principal development contexts (attachment to parents and peers) on the way in which adolescents experience their bodies. Six hundred and ninety adolescents and young adults (242 male and 448 female) participated in this study, with ages varying between 15 and 23 years (M = 17,8 and SD= 2,00). The results of the prediction model revealed that gender and romantic attachment were the variables that showed the strongest effect on the variation in body image. A mediation effect was observed among attachment to parents and body image through romantic and friendship relationships. The results highlight the need of understanding body experience in an interpersonal context.

Body affective memories: a qualitative study about parent’s role in body experience

In this study we are interested in understand the thoughts and feelings underlying to body experience in family context. We intend to listen the adolescents voices concerning their representation about the relationship that they have with theirs bodies and with the world, listening and understand, throughout semi-structured interviews, the participants personal narratives about their body experience development. The interview focus, essentially, in the meaning construction about body along development (the living experience of relational and emotional body since childhood until the actual moment of the interview), regarding the quality of parents relationship. Due to the absence of studies in this domain, this work intends to be an eventual contribute for the understanding of the body while relational experience and to understand how adolescents and young adults speak about their body.