The Relationship Between Sexual Concordance and Interoception in Anxious and Nonanxious Women

Abstract

Introduction Sexual concordance refers to the association between physiological and self-reported sexual arousal. Women typically exhibit lower sexual concordance scores than men. There is also a sex difference in interoception—awareness of (nonsexual) physiological states or responses—such that women, compared with men, tend to be less aware of and less accurate at detecting changes in their physiological responses. Women with anxiety problems tend to have better interoceptive abilities than nonanxious women. Aim To investigate whether women's lower sexual concordance is associated with interoception using a sample likely to show high variation in interoceptive abilities. Method Sixteen anxious and 15 nonanxious women were presented with twelve 90 seconds sexual and nonsexual film clips while their genital response, heart rate, and respiration rate were measured. A heartbeat mental tracking task was also employed. Main Outcome Measures Genital response was measured with a vaginal photoplethysmograph. Heart rate was measured with an electrocardiogram and respiration rate with a thermistor. Participants estimated their physiological responses after each film. A mental tracking task was also used to assess participants' awareness of heart rate. Within-subject correlations were computed for each physiological/self-reported response combination. Results Overall, sexual concordance (i.e., the correlation between genital responses and perceptions of genital response) was not significantly associated with heart rate awareness or respiration rate awareness. Anxious women did not exhibit significantly higher sexual concordance or heart rate awareness than nonanxious women; the nonanxious women actually exhibited higher respiration rate awareness. Conclusion The results suggest that sexual concordance may be a distinct phenomenon from interoception and in need of its own explanation.

Interoceptive dysfunction: Toward an integrated framework for understanding somatic and affective disturbance in depression.

“… 27 The available evidence suggests that sexual concordance is not significantly related to performance on typical laboratory measures of interoceptive sensitivity such as HBP (Suschinsky & Lalumière, 2012, 2014). No studies to date have, however, examined the correlation between sexual concordance and performance on real-world measures of interoceptive sensitivity (e.g., Cox et al, 1985).…”

Interoception and sexual response in women with low sexual desire

“…After each trial, participants recorded their number of heartbeats as well as an estimate of how many they might have missed. We followed the procedures adopted by other researchers such that interoceptive heart rate awareness was calculated by taking the absolute difference between the reported number of heartbeats (sum of heartbeats that were felt and potentially missed) and the actual number of heartbeats (taken by the ECG) divided by the actual number of heartbeats in order to obtain an error score [ 32 ]. This value was then subtracted from one to obtain an interoceptive awareness score, and then averaged across the three trials [ 43 ].…”

“…Since participants rated their heart rate and respiration rate awareness after the films, Suschinsky and Lalumière hypothesized that their ratings may have been influenced by memory or distraction from film clips [ 27 ]. Therefore, in a follow-up study, Suschinsky and Lalumière [ 32 ] utilized the Heartbeat Perception Task [ 33 ] to measure physiological awareness, which involved women counting their heartbeats before and after watching an erotic film clip, in 16 anxious and 15 non-anxious women. Again, sexual concordance was not significantly related to heartbeat perception accuracy or to respiration rate awareness in the combined group.…”

“…Taken together, the goal of this study was to examine the relationship between interoceptive awareness (measured both objectively and with a self-report measure) and sexual concordance in women with SIAD. We aimed to replicate the design from one previous study [ 32 ], but with two modifications: (a) we included a validated self-report measure of interoceptive awareness in addition to measuring heartbeat perception accuracy objectively; and (b) we applied the design to a sample of women with a diagnosed sexual dysfunction. Though we predicted a positive but small association between genital and subjective sexual arousal, we did not have a priori predictions about the association between sexual concordance and interoception, measured either objectively or subjectively, given conflicting findings in the literature to date.…”

Devices and Methods to Measure Female Sexual Arousal

“…), and what factors might influence the length of time required to reach baseline levels of arousal. For example, studies using VPP often show multiple short stimuli within one testing session, and while the sexual stimulus itself might be 90 seconds long the neutral or inter‐stimulus interval could be up to 120 seconds (e.g., [81]) for participants to return to baseline. For labial temperature, Prause and Heiman reported a 10‐minute back‐to‐baseline interval following a 10‐minute sexually explicit stimulus [82].…”