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Do interoceptive accuracy and interoceptive sensibility predict emotion regulation?

Abstract

Introduction

Interoception refers to awareness, interpretation, and integration of sensations in the body. While interoceptive accuracy has long been regarded as a core component of emotional experience, less is known about the relationship of interoceptive accuracy and related facets of interoception to emotion regulation deficits. This study explores how interoceptive accuracy and interoceptive sensibility relate to emotion regulation in a non-clinical sample.

Methods

Undergraduate participants completed a heartbeat perception task and the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (Noticing and Body Listening sub-scales), and rated their confidence in performance on the heartbeat perception task. Participants also completed self-report measures of emotional awareness and regulation (Profile of Emotional Competence, intrapersonal emotion identification and emotion regulation sub-scales), and rated their use of different coping strategies (Brief COPE).

Results

Noticing predicted emotion identification, emotion regulation, and the use of adaptive but not maladaptive coping strategies. Heartbeat perception accuracy did not significantly contribute to the prediction of any outcome variables.

Discussion

Future work is needed to extend these findings to clinical populations. The results from this study support the use of interoceptive training interventions to promote emotional wellbeing.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

References

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the support of the undergraduate research assistants, Sophie Bell and Iris Yang, who helped to collect this data.

Funding

This study was not funded.

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Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stephanie A. Schuette.

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Conflict of interest

Authors Stephanie Schuette, Nancy Zucker and Moria Smoski declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Research involving human participants

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Duke University Campus Institutional Review Board (Protocol 2018-0291) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Schuette, S.A., Zucker, N.L. & Smoski, M.J. Do interoceptive accuracy and interoceptive sensibility predict emotion regulation?. Psychological Research 85, 1894–1908 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-020-01369-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-020-01369-2