Mark Gardner, Irina Mostafa and Jeremy Corcoran 2024. Preprint: Heartfelt mentalising: Interoception modulates the ability to resolve conflict between self- and other- perspectives. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dgbqf
| Title | Preprint: Heartfelt mentalising: Interoception modulates the ability to resolve conflict between self- and other- perspectives |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mark Gardner, Irina Mostafa and Jeremy Corcoran |
| Description | Interoception may contribute to social cognition by grounding the self in the body, thus facilitating selection between self and other perspectives. While individual differences in interoceptive sensitivity are known to relate to spatial perspective-taking, similar associations have yet to be found for mentalising. Here, for the first time, we assessed how interoceptive sensitivity relates to spontaneous level 1 visual perspective-taking – the relatively automatic tracking of what others can see. Sixty adult participants completed the widely used heartbeat counting task followed by the dot perspective task in which they made judgements both from their own perspective and that of a human avatar. Interoceptive sensitivity was found to relate to performance in the dot perspective task measured by accuracy, but not speed of responding. Specifically, individuals with low interoceptive sensitivity made more errors resolving conflict between their own and others’ mental states than their counterparts with high interoceptive sensitivity. This difference remained when time estimation and knowledge of normal heart rate were both statistically controlled. These findings provide the first evidence that interoception modulates mentalising. Protection from self-other blurring afforded by interoception may help reduce involuntarily intrusions from others’ mental states. |
| Year | 2024 |
| Output media | PsyArXiv preprint |
| Publisher | PsyArXiv |
| Publication dates | |
| Published | 17 Dec 2024 |
| Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dgbqf |
| Web address (URL) | https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dgbqf |