Abstract
Interoception refers to the perception of and attention to internal bodily signals. Previous research has investigated the ability to detect and attend to these states in the self, but no research thus far has investigated the ability to perceive internal states in others, beyond emotional states. Where emotion is concerned, alexithymia (difficulties identifying and describing one’s own emotions) is associated with difficulties recognising emotions in others. This suggests that understanding one’s own emotions is critical for understanding and recognising others’. It is therefore likely that the ability to perceive one’s own non-emotional internal states also predicts the ability to recognise non-emotional bodily states in others. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between the ability to recognise others’ non-emotional bodily states and self-reported interoceptive accuracy and attention, and how this relationship develops across adolescence and early adulthood. Participants between the ages of 16 and 21 years of age viewed randomly presented novel photographic stimuli created and validated for the purpose of this study, depicting six actors portraying nine internal states. Images were presented for 2000ms and replaced by 10 response options (orthographic words with images and an audio button), describing the internal states and an ‘animal’ option. Ten photographs of animals were randomly interleaved in order to ensure participants were attending to the images and could complete the basic sorting task. Self-reported interoceptive abilities were found to relate differently to recognition of others' non-emotional internal states at different stages of development. Results are discussed in terms of the potential impact of interoceptive deficits on social abilities.