Billaux Pauline, Desmedt Olivier, Corneille Olivier, Luminet Olivier, Leganes-Fonteneau Mateo, Billieux Joël, Maurage Pierre
Louvain Experimental Psychopathology Research Group (LEP), Psychological Science Research Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS), Brussels, Belgium.
Addict Biol. 2025 May;30(5):e70032. doi: 10.1111/adb.70032.
Theoretical models propose that interoception plays a role in addictive disorder. However, this assumption has been mostly tested using the heartbeat counting task (HCT), which is known to be contaminated by estimation strategies. An adapted version of the HCT (in which respondents report only felt heartbeats) has been developed to reduce estimation biases. Here, we examined the validity of the classical and adapted HCT versions in samples presenting alcohol use disorders. We recruited a clinical sample of 48 patients with severe alcohol use disorder (SAUD), matched with 41 healthy controls (HC), and a subclinical sample of 32 binge drinkers (BD), matched with 30 HC. Participants performed the classical HCT, adapted HCT, and a time estimation task. We additionally assessed mental health variables theoretically related to interoception (alexithymia, anxiety, childhood trauma, depression and emotion regulation). In all groups, HCT scores were smaller in adapted than classical HCT. Patients with SAUD, but not BD, showed lower HCT scores than matched controls, independently of the task. We found no correlation between HCT scores and psychological constructs. Heartbeats reported during classical HCT correlated with seconds reported during time estimation task for SAUD and matched HC, suggesting the use of time estimation strategies to perform the task. The largely reduced HCT performance in the adapted version, the association between HCT performance and time estimation performance and the lack of theoretically expected associations between HCT scores and psychological variables extend doubts on the validity of these tasks for measuring interoceptive accuracy in problematic alcohol consumption.
理论模型表明，内感受在成瘾性障碍中起作用。然而，这一假设大多是通过心跳计数任务（HCT）来检验的，而众所周知，该任务会受到估计策略的干扰。为了减少估计偏差，已经开发了一种HCT的改编版本（即让被试只报告感觉到的心跳）。在此，我们检验了经典版和改编版HCT在患有酒精使用障碍的样本中的有效性。我们招募了一个由48名重度酒精使用障碍（SAUD）患者组成的临床样本，并与41名健康对照（HC）进行匹配，以及一个由32名暴饮者（BD）组成的亚临床样本，并与30名HC进行匹配。参与者进行了经典HCT、改编HCT和时间估计任务。我们还评估了理论上与内感受相关的心理健康变量（述情障碍、焦虑、童年创伤、抑郁和情绪调节）。在所有组中，改编版HCT的分数都低于经典版HCT。SAUD患者而非BD患者的HCT分数低于匹配的对照组，且与任务无关。我们发现HCT分数与心理结构之间没有相关性。SAUD患者及其匹配的HC在经典HCT中报告的心跳与在时间估计任务中报告的秒数相关，这表明在执行任务时使用了时间估计策略。改编版中HCT表现大幅下降、HCT表现与时间估计表现之间的关联以及HCT分数与心理变量之间缺乏理论上预期的关联，这使得人们对这些任务在测量问题性饮酒中的内感受准确性的有效性产生了怀疑。
