Abstract
Interoception, the perception of the body's internal state, contributes to numerous aspects of higher-order cognition. Several theories suggest a causal role for atypical interoception in specific psychiatric disorders, including a recent claim that atypical interoception represents a transdiagnostic impairment across disorders characterized by reduced perception of one's own emotion (alexithymia). Such theories are supported predominantly by evidence from only one interoceptive domain (cardiac); however, evidence of domain-specific interoceptive ability highlights the need to assess interoception in noncardiac domains. Using novel interoceptive tasks, we demonstrate that individuals high in alexithymic traits show a reduced propensity to utilize interoceptive cues to gauge respiratory output (Experiment 1), reduced accuracy on tasks of muscular effort (Experiment 2), and taste sensitivity (Experiment 3), unrelated to any co-occurring autism, depression, or anxiety. Results suggest that alexithymia reflects a multidomain, multidimensional failure of interoception, which is consistent with theories suggesting that atypical interoception may underpin both symptom commonalities between psychiatric disorders and heterogeneity within disorders.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 398-408 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Journal of Experimental Psychology: General |
| Volume | 147 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Jennifer Murphy was supported by a doctoral studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council (1599941; ES/J500057/1). Geoffrey Bird was supported by the Baily Thomas Charitable Trust.
Funding Information:
Jennifer Murphy was supported by a doctoral studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council (1599941; ES/J500057/1). Geoffrey Bird was supported by the Baily Thomas Charitable Trust. This article has been published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s). Author(s) grant(s) the American Psychological Association the exclusive right to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Author(s).
Keywords
- Alexithymia
- Anxiety
- Autism spectrum disorder
- Interoception
- P factor
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- General Psychology
- Developmental Neuroscience