Université Catholique de Louvain, 10 Place du Cardinal Mercier, bte L3.05.01, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
School of Applied Psychology, University College Cork, Ireland.
J Affect Disord. 2019 Mar 1;246:480-485. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2018.12.101. Epub 2018 Dec 26.
Interoception is the ability to perceive one's inner bodily feelings and is thought to be associated with the capacity of recognising and experiencing emotions. Previous research on interoception and emotion regulation has presented limitations arising from the low reliability of the interoceptive measurement and provided inconsistent results. The current study used a mixed method approach to investigate this relationship from the individuals' perspective.
In the first phase (quantitative), questionnaires assessing interoceptive sensibility, the subjective, self-reported ability to perceive internal states, were administered to 100 healthy participants. In the second phase (qualitative), individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine participants. The interviews were analysed using the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Three main dimensions were explored with open questions: 1) Perception of internal bodily states; 2) Emotion regulation; 3) Potential relationship between bodily states perception and emotion recognition and regulation.
Findings revealed that people with low interoceptive abilities show more difficulties in verbalizing their feelings and in decreasing the impact of emotions generated by negative experiences in daily life LIMITATIONS: The generalization of the results is limited by the specific age and gender of the recruited sample.
Responses of the participants supported recent evidence regarding the lack of reliability of the heartbeat counting task as a measure of interoceptive accuracy, however interviews sustained the importance of recognising the bodily states in order to be able to understand and regulate emotions.
内感受是一种感知自身内在身体感觉的能力，被认为与识别和体验情绪的能力有关。先前关于内感受和情绪调节的研究存在一些局限性，源于内感受测量的可靠性较低，并且提供了不一致的结果。本研究采用混合方法从个体的角度探讨了这种关系。
在第一阶段（定量），向 100 名健康参与者发放了评估内感受敏感性的问卷，即主观、自我报告感知内部状态的能力。在第二阶段（定性），对 9 名参与者进行了个体半结构化访谈。使用解释性现象学分析对访谈进行了分析。使用开放性问题探讨了三个主要维度：1）对内部身体状态的感知；2）情绪调节；3）身体状态感知与情绪识别和调节之间的潜在关系。
研究结果表明，内感受能力较低的人在表达自己的感受以及减少日常生活中负面经历所产生的情绪影响方面更困难。局限性：由于招募样本的特定年龄和性别，结果的推广受到限制。
参与者的反应支持了最近关于心跳计数任务作为内感受准确性测量的可靠性较低的证据，然而访谈支持了识别身体状态以能够理解和调节情绪的重要性。
