Measuring interoception: The phase adjustment task

Measuring interoception: The phase adjustment task

•The utility and validity of existing tasks of cardiac interoception is questionable.•The Phase Adjustment Task (PAT) has been developed to overcome these issues.•Participants adjust the phase between tones and heartbeats until they are synchronous.•Results show that the task is not subject to physi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biological psychology Vol. 165; p. 108171
Main Authors: Plans, D., Ponzo, S., Morelli, D., Cairo, M., Ring, C., Keating, C.T., Cunningham, A.C., Catmur, C., Murphy, J., Bird, G.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier B.V 01-10-2021
Subjects:
Anxiety
Cardiac perception
Cardioception
Depression
Empathy
Heartbeat counting task
Heartbeat detection task
Interoception
Mental health
PAT task
Phase adjustment task
Stress
Telemetrics
PAT task
Phase adjustment task
Interoception
Mental health
Heartbeat counting task
Depression
Empathy
Telemetrics
Cardiac perception
Stress
Cardioception
Anxiety
Heartbeat detection task
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Summary:•The utility and validity of existing tasks of cardiac interoception is questionable.•The Phase Adjustment Task (PAT) has been developed to overcome these issues.•Participants adjust the phase between tones and heartbeats until they are synchronous.•Results show that the task is not subject to physiological or psychological confounds.•Scores are associated with empathy but associations with mental health are not robust. Interoception, perception of one’s bodily state, has been associated with mental health and socio-emotional processes. However, several interoception tasks are of questionable validity, meaning associations between interoception and other variables require confirmation with new measures. Here we describe the novel, smartphone-based Phase Adjustment Task (PAT). Tones are presented at the participant’s heart rate, but out of phase with heartbeats. Participants adjust the phase relationship between tones and heartbeats until they are synchronous. Data from 124 participants indicates variance in performance across participants which is not affected by physiological or strategic confounds. Associations between interoception and anxiety, depression and stress were not significant. Weak associations between interoception and mental health variables may be a consequence of testing a non-clinical sample. A second study revealed PAT performance to be moderately stable over one week, consistent with state effects on interoception.
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ISSN:0301-0511
1873-6246
DOI:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2021.108171