Interoceptive accuracy in children aged 8 to 13 and their parents: implications for mental health

Objective: Interoceptive accuracy, meaning accurately detecting and discriminating internal bodily signals, has been proposed as a factor of high relevance to mental health. Nevertheless, studies focusing on the assessment of interoceptive accuracy in children are scarce. Method: The present study addresses this gap by using questionnaire-based measures of interoceptive accuracy as well as behavioural measures such as a heartbeat counting task and a novel cardiovascular signal detection task. These instruments were used to assess interoceptive accuracy in a sample of children aged 8–13 years (N = 37) and their parents (N = 29), aiming to investigate its connection with dimensions of psychopathology, including internalizing, externalizing, and somatoform symptomatology. Following recent suggestions, standard frequentist analyses were complemented by results from Bayesian approaches. Results: The findings provide evidence for a negative relationship between children’s self-reported interoceptive accuracy and internalizing symptomatology reported by their parents (β = –.527). However, no evidence was found to support relationships between experimentally assessed cardiac interoceptive accuracy and psychopathological symptoms. Conclusion: These results emphasize the importance of adopting more comprehensive measures for assessing interoceptive accuracy in research involving children. The paper addresses limitations arising from the limited sample size and potential type I error.

研究目标：内感受准确性（interoceptive accuracy），即精准检测与辨别内部躯体信号的能力，被认为是与心理健康高度相关的影响因素。然而，针对儿童群体内感受准确性评估的相关研究仍较为匮乏。
研究方法：本研究针对这一研究空白展开工作，采用基于问卷的内感受准确性评估工具，以及心跳计数任务、新型心血管信号检测任务等行为学测量手段，对37名8~13岁儿童及其29名家长的内感受准确性进行评估，旨在探究其与内化症状、外化症状及躯体化症状群等精神病理学（psychopathology）维度的关联。同时参考近期研究建议，在标准频率学派分析（frequentist analyses）的基础上补充了贝叶斯方法（Bayesian approaches）的分析结果。
研究结果：结果显示，儿童自我报告的内感受准确性与其家长报告的内化症状群呈显著负相关（β = -0.527）。但未发现实验评估的心脏内感受准确性与精神病理症状存在关联的证据。
研究结论：本研究结果强调，在涉及儿童的内感受准确性评估研究中，采用更全面的测量工具的重要性。本文同时讨论了样本量有限以及潜在I类错误（type I error）带来的研究局限。