A Comparison between Two Methods for Assessing Heartbeat Perception

Abstract

In this study two methods assessing heartbeat perception ability were compared. Subjects (N = 64) completed Schandry's (1981) mental tracking task and Störmer's (1988) heartbeat discrimination procedure (based on Whitehead, Drescher, Heiman, & Blackwell, 1977). In addition, subjects were tested on their ability to estimate the duration of time intervals. A high degree of correspondence was found between the two heartbeat perception tasks for the extreme groups of very good and very poor perceivers, but a low degree of correspondence emerged for the middle range of performance (overall r = .59, p less than .001). Time estimation did not correlate significantly with either heartbeat detection procedure. Blood pressure measurements taken after the Schandry task and between Störmer test blocks showed that blood pressure amplitude was elevated among good perceivers on both heartbeat detection tasks.

Perception of Heart Rate and Blood Pressure: The Role of Alexithymia and Anxiety

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Discrepancies between dimensions of interoception in autism: Implications for emotion and anxiety

“…Prior interoceptive research demonstrates a relationship between objective performance on these two heartbeat tests (e.g. Garfinkel, et al, 2015;Hart, et al, 2013;Knoll & Hodapp, 1992), however this relationship is not always observed, especially in smaller samples (e.g. Phillips,…”

Differential effects of anxiety and depression on interoceptive accuracy

“…It has good test-retest reliability (up to .81) and correlates highly with other heartbeat detection tasks. [51] Former studies [28,[52][53][54] could show that heartbeat perception tasks based on the discrimination method are well validated and reliable (Cronbach's a .69-.90).…”