Abstract
Interoception is the basic process enabling evaluation of one's own bodily states. Several previous studies suggested that altered interoception might be related to disorders in the ability to perceive and express emotions, i.e., alexithymia, and to defects in perceiving and describing one's own health status, i.e., hypochondriasis. The main aim of the present study was to investigate the relationships between alexithymic trait and interoceptive abilities evaluated by the “Self-Awareness Questionnaire” (SAQ), a novel self-report tool for assessing interoceptive awareness. Two hundred and fifty healthy subjects completed the SAQ, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 items (TAS-20), and a questionnaire to assess hypochondriasis, the Illness Attitude Scale (IAS). The SAQ showed a two-factor structure, with good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.88). We observed significant direct correlations between SAQ, TAS-20 and two of its subscales, and the IAS. Regression analysis confirmed that the difficulty in identifying and expressing emotions is significantly related with awareness for one's own interoceptive feelings and with a tendency to misinterpret and amplify bodily sensations. From a clinical point of view, the assessment of interoceptive awareness by the SAQ could be pivotal in evaluating several psychopathological conditions, such as the somatoform disorders.
Highlights
Interoception is the basic process collecting information coming from one’s own body, such as heartbeat, hunger, thirst, breathing, or visceral sensations
Interoception awareness and alexithymia according to Craig (2004, 2009), individual differences in emotional awareness may be directly related to individual differences in interoception
The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationships between bodily awareness, i.e., “interoceptive awareness” after Terasawa et al (2013), and the ability to identify and to describe emotions
Summary
Interoception is the basic process collecting information coming from one’s own body, such as heartbeat, hunger, thirst, breathing, or visceral sensations. Such information is less distinct than that provided by “exteroceptive” somatosensory systems (e.g., touch, or skin temperature), but contributes to maintain homeostasis (Craig, 2003), and allows the brain to build a sense of one’s own physical condition and to answer questions such as “how do you feel now?” (Craig, 2009). Several studies using heartbeat perception tasks demonstrated a positive association between interoception and intensity of emotional experience (e.g., Schandry, 1981; Jones, 1994; Wiens et al, 2000; Barrett et al, 2004; Critchley et al, 2004; Wiens, 2005; Herbert et al, 2007; Pollatos et al, 2007a,b). Pollatos et al (2005) and Dunn et al (2010) reported that individuals with high sensitivity to interoceptive signals showed higher arousal in response to emotional visual stimuli
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