The blink and the body: The role of interoception in the perception of emotionally salient words in an attentional blink paradigm

Abstract

Interoception is the perception of internal bodily states. Individuals with heightened interoceptive accuracy (IA) have been found to have more frequent and intense emotional experiences than those with average or poor IA. One proposed mechanism for these differences is a positive association between IA and attention more broadly. The goal of the present study is to explore attentional processes as a function of IA via the Attentional Blink (AB). The AB is defined as a reduced accuracy when two targets occur in short succession from each other in a rapid stream of stimuli. Emotional stimuli at the second target reduces the AB while emotional stimuli at the first target enhances the AB. The present study examined how behavioral performance and the P300 component of event-related potentials in an AB paradigm is impacted by IA. Healthy undergraduates completed a cardiac awareness task, in which they counted the number of heartbeats they felt without taking their pulse, which was then compared to an objective count of their heartbeats. Based on previously-validated cut scores, 19 high perceivers and 19 average perceivers (matched for age and sex) then completed an AB task with emotional and/or neutral lexical stimuli at T1 and/or T2. Results showed that individuals with average IA performed worse when T1 and T2 were incongruent in terms of affect; similarly, their P300 amplitude to the second target in these conditions was significantly attenuated. Individuals with high IA, however, did not elicit a modulated P300 in any condition; behaviorally, they performed better when both stimuli were congruent in terms of affect. The implications and applications of the study of interoception, cognition, and emotion are discussed.