Beyond calories: the role of media pressure and body appreciation in shaping time perception of food cues in female adolescents

Abstract

Time perception is a complex cognitive construct shaped by emotional processes, which are themselves influenced by psychosocial factors such as media pressure, particularly during adolescence. In this context, the present study examines how exposure to high-calorie food images affects time perception in female adolescents, and how this effect is modulated by media pressure and body appreciation. Fifty-five female adolescents aged 14 to 19 years were recruited from a high school in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France. Participants completed a temporal bisection task involving images of high- and low-calorie foods, followed by the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire, the Body Appreciation Scale, and the SCOFF Questionnaire (Sick, Control, One, Fat, Food). Results confirmed that high-calorie food cues led participants to overestimate durations compared with low-calorie pictures. This time-distortion effect was significantly amplified by greater perceived media pressure. Conversely, higher body appreciation showed a tendency to reduce the magnitude of this overestimation. These results indicate that sociocultural pressures alter cognition by shaping our relationship with food, with downstream effects on time perception. However, longitudinal or experimental designs will be necessary in future research to establish causal relationships. They emphasize the need for early bio-psycho-social interventions during adolescence, a critical window of sensitivity to media and body image.

Introduction

Adolescence is a critical period of neurodevelopmental transition¹, marked by a heightened sensitivity to sociocultural influences² such as media pressure and body image concerns³. In this context, everyday stimuli like food may acquire significant emotional and symbolic value, becoming triggers of anxiety or desire⁴. This issue is particularly relevant in adolescents, for whom food-related cues may act as powerful emotional triggers, especially in females⁵. Despite this, little is known about how such stimuli influence basic cognitive processes such as time perception. The present study addresses this gap by examining how exposure to food images modulates temporal judgments in female adolescents, and how individual differences in body appreciation and perceived media pressure shape this effect.

The premise that potent stimuli can influence time perception is well-supported by decades of research on emotion (for a review, see^6,7). Emotionally arousing stimuli, regardless of valence, consistently produce a subjective lengthening of time, being perceived as lasting longer than neutral stimuli of identical duration. This effect extends beyond primary emotions to motivationally salient stimuli such as food, with studies in adults showing that images of desirable foods are overestimated in duration compared to neutral controls⁸. Thus, the link between food stimuli and time distortion has already been established in the adult population. However, it remains unclear whether this effect generalizes to adolescent populations.

This experience of time lengthening is a consistent form of temporal distortion to the mechanics of our internal time-keeping system. According to the pacemaker-accumulator model⁹, our perception of time is governed by an intrinsic three part “internal clock”. It comprises a pacemaker that emits pulses, an accumulator that collects them, and an attentional switch that regulates their flow. When timing an event, the switch closes at onset and opens at offset, allowing pulses to accumulate only during the event. The total number of pulses determines perceived duration, with higher counts leading to longer subjective time. Therefore, the time-lengthening effect seen with intense arousing emotions is caused by a heightened state of arousal in the central nervous system, which in turn speeds up the entire internal clock system^9,10. This connection has been corroborated by pharmacological research demonstrating that dopamine-modulating drugs impact both arousal and the perception of time^11,12.

While this time-lengthening effect is robust, a growing body of evidence shows that its magnitude can be significantly modulated, both by the nature of the external stimulus and, more importantly, by the individual’s internal psychological state^10,13. For instance, employing emotional regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal (actively reinterpreting a stimulus’s meaning) or suppression (inhibiting one’s emotional expression) has been shown to drastically reduce, or even cancel, the influence of emotional stimuli on time perception¹⁴. This occurs because these top-down strategies effectively decrease emotional arousal¹⁵. The influence of psychosocial context is illustrated by Hallez and colleagues¹⁶, who showed that the time-lengthening effect of negative images was reduced in the presence of a social buffer (e.g., a dog), suggesting that changes in psychological appraisal can attenuate the arousing impact of the stimulus.

As time perception is influenced by internal and psychosocial factors, it is especially relevant to study contexts where these are heightened, such as adolescence, a period marked by strong emotional and media-related pressures. Perceived media pressure, especially that which promotes an often-unattainable body ideal, constitutes a potent psychosocial risk factor impacting the individual’s well-being and psychological state³. Indeed, media pressure fosters the internalization of a “thin ideal,” which can lead to chronic body dissatisfaction and heightened food-related anxiety¹⁷. For adolescents who have strongly internalized sociocultural norms, images of high-calorie food transcend mere motivational stimuli. They can transform into threat signals to their body image, eliciting conflicting emotions such as desire, guilt, or anxiety¹⁸. It can therefore be hypothesized that media pressure acts as an amplifier, exacerbating the emotional salience and arousal elicited by food stimuli. Consequently, among adolescents reporting high media pressure, the temporal lengthening effect is expected to be significantly more pronounced.

Conversely, body appreciation can be conceptualized as a key protective factor. Defined as accepting, respecting, and protecting one’s body, regardless of its conformity to beauty ideals, body appreciation is a core component of positive body image¹⁹. Rather than merely neutralizing dissatisfaction, it fosters a benevolent relationship with oneself. This positive psychological disposition could act as a “cognitive and emotional buffer” against external pressures²⁰. In the presence of a food image, an adolescent with high body appreciation would be better able to regulate her emotional response, appraising the stimulus in a less threatening and more factual manner. This process is akin to a form of spontaneous cognitive reappraisal, which diminishes the arousal generated by the stimulus²¹. Thus, we predict that for adolescents with high body appreciation, the emotional impact of food images will be reduced, leading to a reduction of the time-lengthening effect.

The present study, therefore, aims to investigate the interplay between food cues, individual psychological factors, and time perception in a typical sample of French female adolescents through three primary objectives. First, we seek to replicate the established finding⁸ that exposure to high-calorie food images leads to a subjective overestimation of time compared to low-calorie, within an adolescent sample (H1). Second, and most critically, we will examine the moderating roles of perceived media pressure and body appreciation. We hypothesize that higher perceived media pressure will amplify the overestimation (H2), whereas higher body appreciation will attenuate the distortion (H3).

Methods

Sample and recruitment

A total of 55 female adolescents were recruited for this study in 2024. The recruitment took place in the Scholar Center Saint-Joseph, a private high school located in the Rhône French department, from the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France. Female adolescents attending to school were all invited to participate in this quasi-experimental pilot study. The only inclusion criterion was the acceptance of both the adolescents and their parents and the only elimination criterion was the presence of incomplete or missing data.

Prior to participation, all subjects and their legal guardians were fully informed about the nature, objectives, and procedures of the study. Following this information session, written informed consent was obtained from the parents or legal guardians of all participants, and written informed assent was obtained from the adolescents themselves. Additionally, formal authorization was granted by the school administration, ensuring compliance with all institutional and educational guidelines for research involving human participants, and facilitating the parental consent. All procedures conducted in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committees, as well as with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments. The study received ethical approval from the Nantes University Ethics Committee (N°IRB : IRB00013074).

Materials

The temporal bisection task was performed using Asus brand computers, each equipped with a 32.50 cm by 21.70 cm screen and a 1920 × 1080 FHD resolution. The computers ran a software programmed in Python. The program automatically recorded the participants’ responses.

The randomized questionnaires included the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire (SATAQ; Cronbach’s α = 0.90) to measure communication or media-related sociocultural pressure, comprising 17 items rated on a Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree)²², the Body Appreciation Scale (BAS; Cronbach α : 0.92) for measuring the corporal appreciation over 10 item Likert scale of 5 points, from « never » to « always »¹⁹ and the SCOFF questionnaire (from the English terms : Sick, Control, One, Fat, Food) for determining the risk of the appearance of eating disorders consisting of 5 dichotomous items (‘yes’/’no’), where a score of two or more indicates risk of an eating disorder²³. The last questionnaire on demographic data included the participant’s weight, height, age, and gender. The set of materials consisting of food images (stimuli used in our study) is fully described²⁴.

Figure 1 presents the experimental procedure, including phases, timing, and stimuli.

Fig. 1.

Overview of experimental procedure. te: ms: miliseconds, S: short, L: long.

Experimental procedures

Following parental consent, school visits were carried out. Participants answered the task and surveys individually. They were asked to put away any objects that could allow them to track time. A temporal bisection task was performed, presenting and recording events related to the temporal bisection task, a procedure commonly used in the field of time perception. The participants were first asked to distinguish a short (S) from a long (L) standard duration, based on the presentation of a control picture. Then, during the testing phase, five intermediate durations are integrated along with the previous standard durations. Trials (i.e., image × duration combinations) were presented in a randomized order for each participant, and no feedback was provided.

Emotional pictures (such as attractive food) can be presented as temporal stimuli in addition to the previous control picture. The task remained unchanged for the participants, who must continue judging the durations. In this study the task was performed as referred before⁸, but including only the low and high calorie conditions.

Following the task, three anonymous, randomized, validated paper-based questionnaires were administered to measure potential moderating variables. Finally, the demographic questions were answered.

Statistical analysis

Data analysis was conducted in JASP v 0.19.2.0. Descriptive statistics, including means, standard deviations, kurtosis and skewness coefficient of the samples were calculated to assess the data trends. Pearson correlations were analyzed to understand the linear associations between the variables. The specific variance analysis for repeated measures (ANOVA-RM) were also performed by adjusting for lack of sphericity through the Greenhouse-Geisser method.

The multivariate normality was respected with skewness and kurtosis coefficients (i.e., between [− 2 ; +2])²⁵. All sphericity Mauchly tests for ANOVA-RM were non-significant (p > 0.05) indicating that the variances of the differences between levels in the within-subject factors were homogeneous (preventing the increase of the Type I error risk). Outliers were identified and removed using the 1.5×IQR criterion.

For the temporal bisection task, the Bisection Point (BP) was defined as the duration at which participants respond “long” 50% of the time. For each participant, in each image condition (High-Calorie vs. Low-Calorie), and for each presented duration, the probability of a “long” response [P(long)] was calculated in order to construct individual psychophysical functions (Fig. 1). To quantify temporal perception, two key parameters were derived from the bisection task data: the bisection point (BP) and the Weber Ratio (WR). The BP represents the subjective point of equality, corresponding to the duration that yielded an equal proportion of “short” and “long” responses (p(“long”) = 0.5). The WR, an index of temporal sensitivity, was calculated by dividing the difference limen—defined as the difference between the durations corresponding to 75% and 25% “long” responses—by the BP. In this context, a higher WR value signifies lower sensitivity to temporal duration. To derive the psychophysical parameters, a four-parameter logarithmic sigmoid function was fitted to each participant’s response curve. This approach was chosen in accordance with standard models of psychophysical data²⁶, as it provides a robust fit and yields reliable approximations of the BP and WR²⁷. All data modeling and analysis were performed using Python.

To quantify the effect of image type (high vs. low calorie) a repeated measures ANalysis of COVAriance (ANCOVA) was conducted, including media pressure score (SATAQ) or Body Appreciation (BAS) a covariate, on both the BP and WR.

Results

A total of 55 female French adolescents aged 14 to 19 (mean = 16.53 years, SD = 1.27) were recruited from the Rhone department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France. Participant retention was 100%. The participants’ mean Body Mass Index (BMI) was 22.10, SD = 3.76 (range: 15.4- 30.90). A very high proportion of adolescents were found to be at risk of developing an eating disorder, with 69% scoring 2 or more on the SCOFF questionnaire.

Time overestimations induced by high calorie images

The analysis of participants’ responses revealed how different types of food cues affected their perception of time. As shown in Fig. 2, there was a noticeable shift in the psychophysical function when participants viewed high-calorie images compared to low-calorie ones.

Fig. 2.

Mean proportion of “long” responses plotted against stimulus duration for high-calorie food and control picture conditions.

A repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to assess the effect of image type (high-calorie vs. low-calorie) on the BP.

The results indicated a statistically significant main effect of image type, F(1, 54) = 7.61, p = 0.008, consistent with our first hypothesis. Lower BP value implies a greater overestimation of the perceived duration. Thereby, the food images showing high caloric induced time overestimations (M = 979.36; SD = 130.30) when compared to the low-calorie ones (M = 1029.20; SD = 132.27). No significant effects were observed on the WR.

The effect of media pressure as co-variable

Table 1 presents the Pearson correlation coefficients (r) between the main study variables, indicating the strength and direction of the linear relationships between pairs of variables.

Table 1.

Pearson’s r coefficients and their corresponding p-values.

Variable	SATAQ	BAS	SCOFF	IMC	WR-HC	BP-HC	WR-LC	BP-LC
SATAQ	–	-	–	–	–	–	–	–
BAS	− 0.46 (< 0.001)	–	–	–	–	–	–	–
SCOFF	0.402 (0.002)	− 0.544 (< 0.001)	–	–	–	–	–	–
IMC	− 0.181 (0.186)	0.062 (0.655)	− 0.062 (0.651)	–	–	–	–	–
WR-HC	− 0.189 (0.197)	0.122 ( 0.407)	− 0.068 (0.648)	0.115 (0.435)	–	–	–	–
BP-HC	− 0.003 (0.980)	− 0.056 (0.682)	0.006 (0.965)	0.036 (0.793)	− 0.025 (0.868)	–	–	–
WR-LC	− 0.056 (0.714)	0.083 (0.587)	− 0.130 (0.393)	0.157 (0.302)	0.368 (0.015)	0.022 (0.888)	–	–
BP-LC	− 0.230 (0.091)	0.129 (0.349)	− 0.014 (0.921)	0.111 (0.421)	0.237 (0.104)	0.660 (< 0.001)	0.088 (0.566)	–

WR : Weber ratio, HC : High-calorie, BP : bissection point, LC : Low-calorie.

Bold values indicate p-values.

A repeated-measures ANCOVA controlling for media pressure (SATAQ) indicated that the main effect of image type remained significant, F(1, 53) = 7.93, p = 0.007. More interestingly, and in support of our second hypothesis (H2), the results showed a statistically significant interaction between image type and SATAQ score, F(1, 53) = 4.67, p = 0.035, η²p = 0.08. This interaction indicates that the effect of image type (the difference in BP between high- and low-calorie conditions) depends on the level of sociocultural influence reported by participants via the SATAQ. The between-subjects effect of the SATAQ covariate was not statistically significant, F(1, 53) = 0.95, p = 0.333.

To better understand the significant interaction between image type and media pressure influence (SATAQ) on the BP revealed by the ANCOVA, a simple linear regression analysis was performed. This analysis aimed to determine whether the SATAQ score predicted the magnitude of the temporal processing difference between the two main image conditions. For this, a difference score was calculated for each participant (Bisection Point in the high-calorie condition minus the low-calorie condition), and this score was used as the dependent variable in the regression model, with the SATAQ score as the sole predictor. The analysis of the coefficients showed a positive regression index (B = 3.04; SE = 1.40; β = 0.28; t(53) = 2.16; p = 0.035), suggesting that an increase in SATAQ score is associated with a greater difference between image conditions on the BP. In other words, the more participants report experiencing media pressure, the more they tend to overestimate time in response to high-calorie food images compared to low-calorie ones. No significant effects were observed on the Weber ratios.

As a post-hoc analysis, we also included eating disorder risk based on SCOFF results (coded 1 for at risk, 0 for not at risk) as a between-subjects factor. Indeed, preliminary descriptive correlations showed a link between SATAQ and SCOFF. Thus, it seemed important to demonstrate that the effect of media pressure on time perception in response to food images exists independently of a potential eating disorder. Interestingly, this model further reinforced the aforementioned effects (Main effect of picture: F(1, 52) = 8.71, p = 0.005, η²p = 0.14; SATAQ x Pictures: F(1, 52) = 5.55, p = 0.02, η²p = 0.10). No other significant effects emerged, and thus none involving the SCOFF between-subjects variable (ps > 0.10).

Body appreciation as co-variable

A repeated measures Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was performed to evaluate the effect of image type (high vs. low calorie) on the BP, while controlling the effect of body appreciation (BAS score). In this model, the main effect of image type was not statistically significant (F(1, 53) = 0.91, p = 0.343). Once the variance was associated with the accounted body appreciation, the overall difference in BP between high-calorie and low-calorie image conditions was no longer significant.

Regarding our third hypothesis (H3), assuming a moderating role of body appreciation, the interaction between image type and BAS score did not reach the conventional threshold for statistical significance (α = 0.05), F(1, 53) = 2.87, p = 0.096. However, since the p-value is below 0.1, this result may be interpreted as indicating a trend toward an interaction. This suggests that body appreciation might modulate the effect of image type on the BP, although this modulation did not reach the required level of statistical evidence in this analysis. The between-subjects effect of the BAS covariate was not statistically significant, F(1, 53) = 0.10, p = 0.752. No significant effects were observed on the Weber ratios.

To maintain consistency across all our covariates, we conducted a post hoc analysis to control for the risk of eating disorders (SCOFF) in the ANCOVA model. The interaction effect between image caloric content and BAS was statistically significant, F(1, 52) = 4.06, p = 0.049. This result suggests that the effect of image type on temporal perception (as measured by BP) varies significantly according to participants’ level of body appreciation; as body appreciation increases, the differences between BP decreases when the risk of eating disorders is accounted for in the model. No other effects were found to be significant in this model (ps > 0.10). Yet again, according to SCOFF, the TCA risk did not show a moderator role on temporal perception in this model.

Discussion

The objective of this study was to examine how food images influence time perception in adolescents and how this effect is modulated by psychosocial factors such as perceived media pressure and body appreciation. Consistent with the results in adult population⁸, we confirmed our hypothesis: high-calorie food images were overestimated in duration compared to low-calorie images (H1). Perceived media pressure exacerbated this temporal distortion (H2), whereas higher body appreciation tended to attenuate it (H3). To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine these factors in adolescents using a duration estimation task, addressing a gap in the literature. Given that time perception may influence eating behaviors²⁸, identifying the underlying psychological mechanisms is important for preventing disordered eating.

Our primary finding aligns with internal clock models of time perception, which propose that increased arousal accelerates the internal clock, leading to a greater accumulation of temporal pulses and a subjective lengthening of time. A recent meta-analysis confirmed that negative valence and high-arousal stimuli tend to cause an overestimation of time²⁹, a phenomenon that is particularly pronounced when attention is directed toward the emotional content of the stimulus³⁰. In a food-related context, the evaluation of high-calorie foods is often more negative and elicits strong emotional reactivity, especially in adolescents, with hyperactivation of brain areas like the insula³¹. Visual cue reactivity has already been recognized as a conditioned response that increases physiological arousal³² and is associated with cognitive biases³³ and the activation of fear circuits such as the amygdala and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex³⁴. Thus, the temporal distortion we observe could be the behavioral consequence of this intense neuro-emotional arousal in response to foods deemed threatening to one’s body image.

The assumption that temporal distortion reflects heightened arousal linked to body image threat is supported by our second key finding. Adolescents reporting higher perceived media pressure (SATAQ) showed a greater temporal lengthening effect for high-calorie cues, indicating that media pressure acts as a psychological amplifier of this effect. For adolescents who have internalized the thin ideal^3,17, such stimuli may function as threat signals, eliciting a mix of desire, guilt, and anxiety¹⁸. This heightened emotional conflict likely increases arousal, accelerating the internal clock and enhancing time overestimation. This finding extends previous work by showing that sociocultural factors, specifically media-related pressures can influence both attitudes and cognitive processing of food stimuli, including attentional biases and cue reactivity, even in non-clinical adolescents^35,36. Importantly, this effect remained significant after controlling for SCOFF scores, suggesting that media pressure influences cognitive processes such as time perception even in non-clinical populations, with broader public health implications^37,38.

In contrast, the role of body appreciation should be interpreted with caution. Although the interaction between image type and Body Appreciation Scale (BAS) scores showed a trend toward significance, it did not reach statistical significance in the primary analysis and became significant only after controlling for eating disorder risk (SCOFF), suggesting that this effect may be sensitive to model specification. While this pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that body appreciation may attenuate the impact of high-calorie food cues on time perception, the evidence remains preliminary. The change in significance after controlling for SCOFF may reflect shared variance between body appreciation and eating disorder risk, as body appreciation is consistently negatively associated with disordered eating symptom^39–41. Importantly, excluding individuals based on SCOFF scores would have introduced selection bias by systematically removing a subgroup of participants, thereby limiting the generalizability of the findings to the broader adolescent population. Sampling bias is known to compromise external validity when certain groups are under- or overrepresented^42,43. This consideration is particularly relevant in adolescence, where subclinical eating-related concerns are common and emerging; retaining the full sample therefore enhances the ecological validity of the study.

From a theoretical perspective, body appreciation may contribute to more adaptive emotional regulation when individuals are exposed to potentially threatening stimuli. Adolescents with higher body appreciation, characterized by acceptance and respect for one’s body irrespective of societal ideals¹⁹ may be less likely to appraise food-related cues as threatening, which could reduce the associated emotional arousal. Previous research has shown that higher BAS scores are associated with healthier cognitive-emotional processing, fewer maladaptive cognitive styles, and more adaptive psychological functioning in young women⁴⁴, and finally, better emotion regulation³⁹. This process may resemble cognitive reappraisal, whereby stimuli are evaluated in a more neutral or factual manner. In our work, positive body image could act as a cognitive–emotional buffer, potentially attenuating the impact of salient food cues on time perception. However, given the limited statistical support observed in the present study, this interpretation should be considered tentative and warrants further investigation.

This aligns with broader research indicating that body appreciation is a robust protective factor against media-induced body dissatisfaction²⁰ and is linked to healthier eating behaviors⁴⁵. In addition, higher levels of body appreciation are associated with more positive body image, greater self-esteem, and lower susceptibility to sociocultural pressures related to thinness and appearance ideals^45–47. The strength of this protective role was underscored in our own findings: once body appreciation was accounted for in the model, the effect of high-calorie images on time perception was no longer observed. This suggests that a positive body image may not only buffer external pressures but also shape the cognitive and perceptual experience of potentially challenging stimuli.

This observed tension between a psychosocial risk factor (media pressure) and a protective factor (body appreciation) is not merely theoretical but reflects a central aspect of adolescents’ lived experiences. Its clinical relevance is underscored by the characteristics of our sample, in which a substantial proportion (69%) was at risk for developing an eating disorder (SCOFF score ≥ 2). This finding highlights the urgency of investigating how media, body image, and cognitive processing of food interact in a general adolescent population. Furthermore, distortions in time perception may have real-world implications for eating behavior. For example, a food that feels as though it has been contemplated for longer may become more salient, potentially increasing the likelihood of consumption or, conversely, exacerbating guilt and avoidance. As suggested before²⁸, subjective time experiences could influence eating behaviors, making the identification of these psychological modulators a critical step toward early prevention strategies for disordered eating.

While these findings are promising, they must be interpreted in light of several methodological limitations. First, the sample consisted exclusively of female adolescents from a single private high school in the Rhône department of France, which limits generalizability to other populations, including males and individuals from different socioeconomic or cultural backgrounds. Additionally, the voluntary nature of participation, requiring consent from both adolescents and their parents, may have introduced selection bias, as individuals with a pre-existing interest in body image or eating behaviors may have been more likely to participate.

Moreover, the study did not account for specific anxiety related to food beyond the general risk assessed by the SCOFF questionnaire. Participants with heightened food-related anxiety may have experienced increased anticipatory arousal, potentially influencing time perception independently of the motivational salience of the stimuli. Future research should incorporate non-food-related emotional stimuli to disentangle these effects. Although participants were recruited as healthy adolescents based on self-report and parental consent, the absence of formal screening for dieting behaviors or clinical eating disorders represents a limitation. Subclinical or early-stage disturbances may not have been detected by the SCOFF alone, and time constraints precluded the use of more comprehensive dietary assessments; indirect measures such as food frequency questionnaires and 24-hour recalls are themselves subject to self-report biases⁴⁸. Future studies should incorporate validated clinical interviews and objective dietary measures to better characterize the sample.

Finally, causal inferences regarding psychosocial factors remain limited. Although the experimental manipulation of image type supports a causal interpretation of its effect on time perception, media pressure (SATAQ) and body appreciation (BAS) were not experimentally manipulated. Therefore, their moderating effects should be interpreted as associational rather than causal. It remains unclear whether media pressure leads to greater temporal distortion or whether individuals predisposed to such distortions are more sensitive to media influences. Longitudinal designs will be necessary to clarify these relationships.

Despite these limitations, this study provides compelling evidence that the perception of time for food cues in female adolescents is not a purely objective process but is significantly shaped by the psychosocial context. Media pressure acts as an amplifier, magnifying the temporal distortion caused by high-calorie foods, while body appreciation might serve as a protective factor, thus mitigating this effect. These findings highlight the profound impact of body image on fundamental cognitive processes and underscore the importance of promoting positive body image and media literacy as potential avenues for preventing eating-related pathologies in adolescents.

Author contributions

Conceptualization: QH; Methodology: QH; Formal analysis: QH; Investigation: QH; Data Curation: QH; Writing—Original Draft: QH, DRP, VF; Writing—Review and Editing: QH, DRP, VF; Supervision: QH, VF, SG; Project Administration: QH.

Funding

This study was funded by a French national research Grant: ANR-21-C36-009.

Data availability

All data supporting the findings of this study are publicly available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) at https://osf.io/qeazk/?view\_only=cc7a6ff47ad545068cbe981ba36726d2⁴⁹.

Declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.