Interoceptive and exteroceptive attention have opposite effects on subsequent somatosensory perceptual decision making

Abstract

Evidence suggests that interoceptive and exteroceptive attention might have different perceptual effects. However, the effects of these different types of body-focused attention have never been directly compared. The current research investigated how interoceptive and exteroceptive attention affect subsequent performance on the somatic signal detection task (SSDT). In Experiment 1, 37 participants completed the SSDT under usual testing conditions and after performing an interoceptive heartbeat perception task. This task led to a more liberal response criterion, leading to increased touch reports in the presence and absence of a target vibration. This finding is consistent with suggestions that attending internally contributes to physical symptom reporting in patients with medically unexplained symptoms (MUS). In Experiment 2, 40 participants completed the SSDT before and after an exteroceptive grating orientation task. This task led to a more stringent response criterion, leading to decreased touch reports in the presence and absence of the target, possibly via a reduction in sensory noise. This work demonstrates that internal and external body-focused attention can have opposite effects on subsequent somatic perceptual decision making and suggests that attentional training could be useful for patients reporting MUS.

Neural correlates of interoception: Effects of interoceptive focus and relationship to dimensional measures of body awareness

“…Heartbeat detection accuracy using the formula described above revealed very high overall accuracy in the group (mean value = 0.92, range 0.82–0.97). However, as explained, given that heartbeat ratings used multiple choice responses, these values would be expected to be higher than those found in other studies where subjects reported the number of heartbeats without options from which to choose [Dunn et al, ; Fustos et al, ; Garfinkel et al, ; Herbert et al, ; Mirams et al, ; Pollatos et al, ; Werner et al, ]. Accordingly, the error analysis painted a slightly different picture, revealing a high overall percentage of errors (mean = 76.03%, range 41.67–100%).…”

Symptom Perception, Awareness and Interpretation

“…As to the first question, direct manipulations of attention to the body and studies assessing body awareness generally show that attention focused on the body enhances the sensitivity to interoceptive stimulation and increases symptom reports. This has been documented by studies on tactile stimulation (Mirams et al, 2012), respiration (Stegen et al, 2001), pain (Villemure andBushnell, 2009), itch (Van Laarhoven et al, 2010), dyspnea (von Leupoldt et al, 2007), and general symptom reporting (Verkuil et al, 2007). Interestingly, not just symptom reports but also objective cough frequency is enhanced by focusing attention on internal sensations ( Van den Bergh et al, 2012).…”

“…In a study applying low-intensity tactile stimuli, it was shown that a more liberal response criterion was used when attention was directed inward, leading to more false positives (Mirams et al, 2012). Some groups, such as persons with high-trait negative affectivity (NA) who tend to focus attention inward during a physiological challenge (Stegen et al, 2001), report more symptoms, which are less closely related to the induced physiological changes ( Van den Bergh et al, 2004;Bogaerts et al, 2005).…”

How we perceive our own hands: Effects of attention, aging, and sex

“…The drawing representing participants' right hands has been reversed so that it could be integrated into the frequency maps. 2005; Mirams et al 2012;Bauer et al 2014aBauer et al , 2014b: the perception depends on the representation of the body per se and, therefore, if responses are distorted, then the body representation is distorted (Longo et al 2010).…”