Knowing your heart and your mind: The relationships between metamemory and interoception

Abstract

Humans experience a unified self that integrates our mental lives and physical bodies, but many studies focus on isolated domains of self-knowledge. We tested the hypothesis that knowledge of one’s mind and body are related by examining metamemory and interoception. We evaluated two dimensions of metamemory and interoception: subjective beliefs and the accuracy of those beliefs compared to objective criteria. We first demonstrated, in two studies, that metamemory beliefs were positively correlated with interoceptive beliefs, and this was not due to domain-general confidence. Finally, we showed that individuals with better metamemory accuracy also had better interoceptive accuracy. Taken together, these findings suggest a common mechanism subserving knowledge of our cognitive and bodily states.

At the Heart of Neurological Dimensionality: Cross-Nosological and Multimodal Cardiac Interoceptive Deficits

“…Moreover, cardiac interoceptive accuracy proves more sensitive than cardiac interoceptive learning ( 10 , 13 , 30 ) across cardiac and neurological conditions. Regarding b) metacognition, the top feature was afforded by sensibility (i.e., confidence about one’s own performance ( 7 , 79 , 80 )) of the learning condition. This is consistent with deficits in confidence of learning ( 10 , 81 ) and lack of insight ( 82 – 85 ) in neurological conditions, whereas cardiac patients show normal confidence ratings ( 86 ).…”

Human Metacognition Across Domains: Insights from Individual Differences and Neuroimaging

“…For example, in situations where noise in the stimulus induces a deviation from the expected performance level, the expected mapping between confidence and decision time may break down (Fetsch, Kiani, Newsome & Shadlen, 2014; Rahnev, Maniscalco, Luber, Lau & Lisanby, 2011; Peters et al, 2017; Zylberberg, Fetsch & Shadlen, 2016). Similarly, interoceptive states may provide additional proxies when evaluating self-performance (Allen et al, 2016; Chua & Bliss-Moreau, 2016). This perspective on the formation of confidence in decision-making converges with established “inferential” or cue-based models of confidence formation in the metamemory literature, which suggest that cues such as accessibility (the degree of partial knowledge about the target) contribute to confidence estimates (Koriat and Levy-Sadot, 2001).…”

Individuals with Autistic Traits Exhibit Heightened Alexithymia But Intact Interoceptive-Exteroceptive Sensory Integration

“…Empirical evidence suggest that interoceptive accuracy (i.e., the extent to which an individual can accurately detect interoceptive signals) is associated with memory and learning (Chua & Bliss-Moreau, 2016;Garfinkel et al, 2013;Umeda et al, 2016), emotion regulation (Fuestoes et al, 2013;Schaan et al, 2019), empathy (Fukushima et al, 2011;Mul et al, 2018), self-awareness (Seth, 2013;Seth & Tsakiris, 2018;Shah, 2016) and decision making (Dunn et al, 2010;Soosalu et al, 2019). Importantly, accurate detection and integration of internal bodily signals is believed to be fundamental to homeostasis (Berntson et al, 1993;Tsakiris & Critchley, 2016), and could facilitate the interaction between one's embodied self and the external environment (Quattrocki & Friston, 2014).…”