Itoi Chihiro, Ujiie Yuta, Ooishi Yuuki, Kashino Makio
NTT Communication Science Laboratories, 3-1 Morinosato Wakamiya, Atsugi, Kanagawa, 243-0198, Japan.
Division of Psychology, Institute of Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, 305-8577, Japan.
Discov Ment Health. 2024 Apr 18;4(1):13. doi: 10.1007/s44192-024-00065-6.
Most autistic people experience difficulties in sensory processing, including interoceptive processing. For example, they often report subjective difficulties in the interoceptive processing of interoceptive input, such as difficulty in interpreting bodily signals, including hunger, thirst, and fatigue. However, whether these subjective interoceptive difficulties are from underlying problems in interoceptive accuracy remains unclear. This study investigated the relationship between subjective interoceptive difficulty and behavioral interoceptive accuracy in autistic adults and a control group. Subjective interoceptive accuracy was measured using an interoceptive sensitivity questionnaire, and behavioral interoceptive accuracy was measured using a heartbeat counting task. The results showed no significant relationship between subjective interoceptive difficulty and behavioral interoceptive accuracy in the autistic or control groups. This suggests that subjective interoceptive difficulty and behavioral interoceptive accuracy reflect different aspects of interoceptive processing. One possible interpretation is that autistic adults can identify individual local sensory inputs, such as heartbeats, however, they have difficulty integrating multiple inputs and recognizing internal body states such as hunger and fatigue.
大多数自闭症患者在感觉处理方面存在困难，包括内感受处理。例如，他们经常报告在内感受输入的内感受处理方面存在主观困难，比如在解读身体信号（包括饥饿、口渴和疲劳）时存在困难。然而，这些主观的内感受困难是否源于内感受准确性的潜在问题仍不清楚。本研究调查了自闭症成年人和对照组中主观内感受困难与行为内感受准确性之间的关系。主观内感受准确性通过内感受敏感性问卷进行测量，行为内感受准确性通过心跳计数任务进行测量。结果表明，自闭症组或对照组中主观内感受困难与行为内感受准确性之间没有显著关系。这表明主观内感受困难和行为内感受准确性反映了内感受处理的不同方面。一种可能的解释是，自闭症成年人能够识别个体局部的感觉输入，如心跳，然而，他们在整合多个输入并识别诸如饥饿和疲劳等内部身体状态方面存在困难。
