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Uncertain Hearts: Imprecise Interoceptive Beliefs in Alexithymia

Poster Session D - Monday, March 9, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Naho Suzuki^1,2 (), Satoshi Umeda^3,4, Yuri Terasawa^3,4; ¹Graduate School of Human Relations, Keio University, ²Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, ³Keio University Global Research Institute, ⁴Department of Psychology, Faculty of Letters, Keio University

Interoception refers to the perception of internal bodily signals such as heartbeats. Previous studies have shown that alexithymia, defined as difficulty in identifying and describing emotions, is associated with reduced interoceptive accuracy. However, traditional interoceptive tasks, including the heartbeat counting and discrimination tasks, mainly reflect subjective beliefs about one’s heart rate rather than interoceptive accuracy. This study examined the relationship between alexithymia and interoceptive belief using the Heart Rate Discrimination (HRD) task developed by Legrand et al. (2022). Seventy Japanese university students (49 women; M = 21.0 years, SD = 2.22) completed the HRD task and self-report questionnaires assessing alexithymia (TAS-20), autistic traits (AQ), depression (SDS), anxiety (STAI), and interoceptive sensibility (MAIA). The HRD task quantifies belief bias (α: deviation from actual heart rate) and precision (β: estimation uncertainty) under interoceptive and exteroceptive conditions. It also provides a confidence index that captures metacognitive awareness of one’s interoceptive belief. Holm-corrected partial correlations controlling for SDS, STAI, and AQ revealed that, in the interoceptive condition, β correlated positively with TAS-20 total (pr = 0.06, p = 0.038) and Externally Oriented Thinking (EOT; pr = 0.14, p = 0.021), while α correlated with Difficulty Describing Feelings (DDF; pr = 0.11, p = 0.022). Under the exteroceptive condition, β and α correlated negatively with EOT. These findings suggest that alexithymia is characterized by unstable and biased interoceptive beliefs, which may impede emotion recognition and promote somatization by misinterpreting bodily sensations as physical symptoms.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Other