Reliability of the Heartbeat Tracking Task to Assess Interoception

Area of Science:

• Psychophysiology
• Neuroscience
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• Interoception, the perception of internal body signals, is crucial for homeostasis and well-being.
• The heartbeat tracking task (HTT) is a common method for assessing cardiac interoception accuracy.
• Reliability evidence for HTT is limited, potentially compromising interoception assessment validity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the test-retest reliability of the heartbeat tracking task (HTT).
• To assess the reliability of interoceptive accuracy, sensibility, and awareness.
• To investigate HTT outcome behavior across task variations.

Main Methods:

• Thirty-one healthy adults completed two consecutive HTT sessions with a one-day interval.
• Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), standard error of measurement (SEM), and minimal detectable difference (MD) were calculated.
• Analyses examined the reliability of interoceptive accuracy, sensibility, and awareness.

Main Results:

• Good relative reliability was found for interoceptive accuracy (ICC = 0.880).
• Moderate reliability was observed for sensibility (ICC = 0.617) and awareness (ICC = 0.593).
• Absolute reliability indicated low thresholds for detecting true effects, and reducing HTT blocks did not alter outcomes.

Conclusions:

• The heartbeat tracking task (HTT) demonstrates good to moderate test-retest reliability for assessing interoceptive competences.
• HTT is a reliable tool for measuring interoceptive accuracy, sensibility, and awareness in healthy adults.
• Findings support the use of HTT in research and clinical settings for interoception assessment.