A comparison between two methods for assessing heartbeat perception.

In this study two methods assessing heartbeat perception ability were compared. Subjects (N = 64) completed Schandry's (1981) mental tracking task and Störmer's (1988) heartbeat discrimination procedure (based on Whitehead, Drescher, Heiman, & Blackwell, 1977). In addition, subjects were tested on their ability to estimate the duration of time intervals. A high degree of correspondence was found between the two heartbeat perception tasks for the extreme groups of very good and very poor perceivers, but a low degree of correspondence emerged for the middle range of performance (overall r = .59, p less than .001). Time estimation did not correlate significantly with either heartbeat detection procedure. Blood pressure measurements taken after the Schandry task and between Störmer test blocks showed that blood pressure amplitude was elevated among good perceivers on both heartbeat detection tasks.