This latter was administered through the experimental session) and trait anxiousness. It represents widelyvalidated and reputable selfreport measures of trait and state anxiousness. Sociodemographic features and questionnaire scores obtained from the two groups of participants are shown in Table . The experimental protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of Casa di Cura Villa Margherita,Arcugnano,Vicenza,Italy. The experiment was carried out in accordance with all the YHO-13351 (free base) manufacturer ethical requirements on the Declaration of Helsinki and all participants involved within the study gave written informed consent.Participants had been fitted with mm AgAgCl pregelled disposable electrodes for ECG recording. ECG data had been converted and amplified with an eightchannel amplifier (PowerLab; ADInstruments UK) and displayed,stored,and lowered with LabChart software program package (ADInstruments Inc. All tasks had been carried out inside the identical quiet and softly illuminated space and participants had been instructed to loosen up and remain as still as possible for the duration of recording to reduce motion artifacts.Physiological Proxemics TaskParticipants stood up at an finish of a cm strip previously placed around the floor,inside a comfy and relaxed position,leaning against the wall. The experiment consisted in two blocks in which a female experimenter gradually approached or distanced herself in the participant,along the strip,(from to cm,or vice versa,frontally). Within the initial block,the experimenter had an underweight BMI (Thin condition: . Kgm) and inside the second block,the experimenter had an obese BMI (Fat condition: Kgm). Both the experimenters have been dressed in the similar way,wearing a black tracksuit (Figure. The order from the two blocks was counterbalanced across participants. Participants had been instructed to spend focus and constantly adhere to with their gaze the experimenter and reassured that the experimenter would have PubMed ID:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26240163 under no circumstances touched them. Every single experimental block consisted of trials ( for each situation presented in random order). Following audio cues,each experimenter could move along the strip:ProcedureParticipants were required to abstain from caffeine,tobacco,and alcohol,for h prior to the experimental session (Bal et al. Immediately after arrival in the laboratory,participants filled in the BDI (Ghisi et al and the StateTrait STAI (Pedrabissi and Santinello. Both groups of participants performed,inside the following order: the Physiological proxemics job; the Heartbeat Perception Task; the Behavioral proxemics job (Kennedy et al ,see under and Figure for a description in the tasks). Participants’ ECG was recorded for the whole duration in the Physiological proxemics process plus the Heartbeat Perception Process. Additionally,in the starting and in the finish from the experimental session,and immediately after the Physiological proxemics activity,a min resting baseline ECG recording was performed,duringFrontiers in Human Neuroscience www.frontiersin.orgMay Volume ArticleAmbrosecchia et al.Anorexia and Autonomic Reactivity in Social ContextFIGURE Physiological and behavioral proxemics process representations. It show respectively the FatThin Fargaze situations (A,B); the FatThin FarNo gaze situations (C,D); the FatThin Neargaze conditions (E,F); the FatThin NearNo gaze situations (G,H). starting from to cm from the participant while hunting in the participant’s eyes (Fargaze condition); beginning from to cm from the participant whilst glancing down (FarNo gaze situation); beginning from to cm in the participant although hunting within the participant’s eyes (Neargaze c.