Introduction:
This thesis deals with interoception, in other words the way we pay attention to our body sensations, and its links with emotional experience. Interoception has been theorized as a three-dimensional construct: interoceptive accuracy (the exactness with which we notice changes in body signals), interoceptive sensitivity (how we evaluate and interpret them), and metacognitive interoception (statistical correspondence between the first two dimensions). If the scientific literature is rather clear on the influence of interoceptive accuracy facet, it is less clear for the facet of interoceptive sensitivity. Being aware of your body sensations can be a major source of information to guide our behavior. However, the appraisal of these internal messages is specific to each person and be subjected to information processing biases. Current models of anxiety assume the influence of misinterpretation of body signals, and hypervigilance to them in the etiology of anxiety.
This investigation intends to examine how interoception and emotion are tightly linked and how they influence each other.
The aim of this research was to provide an initial explanation to the differences between two populations (anxious people and meditators) who both attach a significant importance to their internal experiences but, have antagonistic emotional experience. As a matter of fact, this two populations have been the subject of many researches but, to our knowledge, have never been compared.
Method:
The idea was to contrast two distinct groups with the aim of understanding how emotion and
interoception are intertwined, and how could we account for such contending results concerning the impact of interoception on emotional experience. In order to analyze that, we’ve compared a group of anxious individuals to a group of individuals having benefited from mindfulness intervention.
For the purpose of highlighting explanatory mechanisms of divergent emotional competences, participants completed the eight sub-scales of the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA). The benefit was to use a questionnaire evaluating interoception while distinguishing different dimensions to identify possible discrepancies between anxious individuals and meditators on specific dimensions.
Results:
We reason that there was no significative difference on the “noticing” dimension of interoception between the two groups. According to our hypotheses, anxious and meditating people, are very attentive to their internal signals.
Thus, it was possible to put the emphasis on the role played by the attribution of a valence to the perceived sensation.
Meanwhile we observe that, weaker results obtained in the three following dimensions of interoceptive sensitivity: “non-reactivity to internal events”, “attentional regulation” and “self-regulation” seems to play a pivotal role on individual’s emotional competences, in accordance with the assumptions made.
Discussion:
We discussed limitations of this research, in particular methodological ones.
We first reckon that many other factors are at stake, for example we should have better estimated whether high scores one the emotional regulation dimension of the Profile emotional competences on the emotional regulation’s dimension of PEC might have other origin than meditation practice.
Equally, the context in which recruitment of participant were recruited introduces a bias concerning the lockdown and its effects on psychological state, many researches point out increased levels of anxiety.
It would have been interesting to have data on interoceptive accuracy, but current tasks did not permit valid measurements to be made. Further studies should develop interoceptive accuracy tasks that measure another dimension than heartbeat tracking task because the latter, only estimate a small part of interoceptive abilities. New tasks of interoception accuracy are being developed, such as measuring the readiness to perceive changes in respiratory flow accurately, which is more appropriate to assess the value and the efficiency of mindfulness intervention on the ability to perceive these internal signals with varying degrees of accuracy.
Finally, this study has shown interoceptive deficits on several dimensions for anxious individuals supporting the idea to develop training focused on interoception to promote emotional competences.
Key words: Interoception, emotional competences, interoceptive sensitivity anxious, méditants.
Words I have learned:
reckon that: estimer que
at stake: en jeu
discrepancies: divergences