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Abstract
There is growing interest in interoception, the perception of the body’s internal state, and its relevance for health across development. Most evidence linking interoception to health has used the heartbeat counting task. However, the temporal stability of the measure, particularly during childhood, and the etiological factors that underlie stability, remain largely unexamined. Using data from the ECHO twin sample we estimated the magnitude of genetic and environmental influences on the stability of heartbeat counting across two years (age 8–10), the longest time-frame examined. Heartbeat counting accuracy was modestly correlated across time, (r = .35) and accuracy improved with age. Non-shared environmental factors accounted for the most variance at both time points and were the main contributors to temporal stability of heartbeat counting. Future research should seek to identify these non-shared environmental factors and elucidate whether this relatively modest stability reflects variability of interoception across development or unreliability of the heartbeat counting task.
Highlights
In recent years there has been a growing interest in the importance of interoception, the perception of the body’s internal state (Craig, 2002; Khalsa et al, 2018), for health and aspects of higher order cognition (Khalsa & Lapidus, 2016; Khalsa et al, 2018)
First considering the total genetic, shared environmental and non-shared environmental influences at each time-point, there was a moderate heritability of heartbeat counting at Time 1 (30%)
Shared environmental influences increased from 6% to 22% from Time 1 to Time 2
Summary
In recent years there has been a growing interest in the importance of interoception, the perception of the body’s internal state (Craig, 2002; Khalsa et al, 2018), for health and aspects of higher order cognition (Khalsa & Lapidus, 2016; Khalsa et al, 2018). Much of the research that has examined how individual differences in interoception are related to health (e.g., depression, anxiety or sleep problems) and aspects of higher order cognition (e.g., emotion recognition) has utilized the heartbeat counting task as a measure of interoception (Dale & Anderson, 1978; Schandry, 1981). In this task, participants are asked to count their heartbeat over a series of intervals whilst their objective heartbeat is recorded. Questions have been raised as to the validity of the task as a measure of interoceptive accuracy given evidence that individual differences in physiology, heart rate knowledge, differences in task administration, and non-interoceptive factors may contribute towards task performance (e.g., Desmedt, Luminet, & Corneille, 2018; Khalsa, Rudrauf, Sandesara, Olshansky, & Tranel, 2009; Murphy, Brewer, Hobson, Catmur, & Bird, 2018; Ring, Brener, Knapp, & Mailloux, 2015; Zamariola, Maurage, Luminet, & Corneille, 2018)
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