Key result
Cardiac interoceptive accuracy, assessed by the mental heartbeat tracking task, was not significantly related to subjective arousal or valence ratings of emotion-evoking pictures.
Why the study?
The study aimed to conceptually replicate prior findings suggesting that individuals with higher cardiac interoceptive accuracy experience more intense emotions.
Does cardiac interoceptive accuracy correlate with subjective arousal and valence ratings of emotional pictures in healthy young adults?
Cross-Sectional (n=96)
Does cardiac interoceptive accuracy correlate with subjective arousal and valence ratings of emotional pictures in healthy young adults?
p-value: p=0.792
Cardiac interoceptive accuracy, as assessed by the mental heartbeat tracking task, does not correlate with subjective arousal or valence ratings of emotional pictures.
No association between cardiac interoception and emotional picture ratings; leaves open relevance to affective processing in other populations.
Our aim was to conceptually replicate the findings of previous empirical studies showing that people with higher cardiac interoceptive accuracy experience more intense emotions. Apart of the mental heartbeat tracking task of Schandry, Hungarian (n = 46, 76.0% female, mean age 22.28 ± 2.228) and Norwegian (n = 50, 60.0% female, mean age 24.66 ± 3.048) participants rated the arousal and valence evoked by positive, neutral and negative pictures. Multivariate repeated analysis of variance (applying both frequentist and Bayesian approaches) did not reveal any connection between heartbeat perception scores and the subjective ratings (i.e., arousal and valence) of the pictures in any of the two groups. The lack of the expected association between cardioceptive accuracy and arousal might partly be explained by the methodological differences between previous studies and this one; for example, we did not split or preselected the sample based on the performance on the Schandry task and applied a relatively strict instruction (i.e., by encouraging to count felt heartbeats only, and to report zero if no sensations were detected).
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Ferentzi et al. (2021) conducted a cross-sectional in Healthy (n=96). Cardiac interoceptive accuracy (Schandry task) was evaluated on Association between cardiac interoceptive accuracy and subjective arousal and valence ratings of emotional pictures (p=0.792). Cardiac interoceptive accuracy, assessed by the mental heartbeat tracking task, was not significantly related to subjective arousal or valence ratings of emotion-evoking pictures.
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