Faculty of Education, Musashino University, 1-1-20 Shin-machi, Nishitokyo-shi, Tokyo, 202-8585, Japan.
Faculty of Sociology, Kansai University, 3-3-35 Yamate-cho, Suita, Osaka, 564-8680, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2020 Nov 16;10(1):19866. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-76393-8.
Interoception (perception of one's own physiological state) has been suggested to underpin social cognition, although the mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear. The current study aimed to elucidate the relationship between interoception and two factors underlying social cognition: self-other boundary and sensitivity to social cues. We measured performance in a heartbeat perception task as an index of interoceptive accuracy (IAc), the frequency of spontaneous facial mimicry (SFM) as an index of self-other boundary, and the degree of the effect of eye contact on SFM (difference in SFM between conditions in which models' eyes were directed to and averted from participants) as an index of social-cue sensitivity, and tested correlations among these measures. The results revealed that IAc and SFM were positively correlated only in the direct gaze condition. The extent of the effect of eye contact on SFM (difference in frequency between direct vs. averted conditions) was positively correlated with IAc. These overall findings were also observed in separate analyses of male and female participant groups, supporting the robustness of the findings. The results suggest that interoception is related to sensitivity to social cues, and may also be related to the self-other boundary with modulation by social context.
内感受（对自身生理状态的感知）被认为是社会认知的基础，尽管这种关联的机制仍不清楚。本研究旨在阐明内感受与社会认知的两个基础因素之间的关系：自我-他人边界和对社会线索的敏感性。我们通过测量心跳感知任务的表现来衡量内感受准确性（IAc），通过自发面部模仿（SFM）的频率来衡量自我-他人边界的敏感性，以及通过注视对 SFM 的影响程度（在模型的眼睛朝向和避开参与者的条件下 SFM 的差异）来衡量社会线索的敏感性，并测试这些指标之间的相关性。结果表明，IAc 和 SFM 仅在直接注视条件下呈正相关。注视对 SFM 的影响程度（直接注视与回避条件下频率的差异）与 IAc 呈正相关。这些总体发现也在男性和女性参与者群体的单独分析中得到了观察，支持了研究结果的稳健性。研究结果表明，内感受与对社会线索的敏感性有关，并且可能还与自我-他人边界有关，而社会背景对其具有调节作用。
