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Respiratory and cardiac interoceptive sensitivity in the first two years of life
Markus R Tünte1,2, Stefanie Hoehl1, Moritz Wunderwald1
1University of Vienna, Faculty of Psychology, Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Vienna, Austria.
Insights
Infants show sensitivity to cardiac signals across development. Respiratory interoceptive sensitivity is present in the first year but declines by 18 months, suggesting distinct developmental trajectories for interoception.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Human Development
Background:
- Interoception, the perception of internal bodily signals, is theorized to be crucial for early human development.
- Existing empirical evidence on infant interoceptive sensitivity, particularly cardiac, is mixed and limited in age range.
- Previous studies focused solely on cardiac signals, neglecting other interoceptive modalities like respiration.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate cardiac interoceptive sensitivity in infants at 3, 9, and 18 months.
- To introduce and assess a novel paradigm (iBREATH) for measuring respiratory interoceptive sensitivity in infants.
- To examine the developmental trajectories and interrelations of cardiac and respiratory interoception in early development.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a modified cardiac interoceptive sensitivity paradigm with 135 infants aged 3, 9, and 18 months.
- Introduced the iBREATH paradigm to assess respiratory interoceptive sensitivity in 120 infants.
- Employed cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches, with results validated using specification curve and mega-analytic methods.
Main Results:
- Infants consistently demonstrated cardiac interoceptive sensitivity, preferring stimuli synchronized with their heartbeat across all tested ages.
- Respiratory interoceptive sensitivity was observed in infants up to 12 months but not at 18 months.
- A relationship between cardiac and respiratory interoceptive sensitivity emerged at 18 months, but not at earlier ages (3 and 9 months).
Conclusions:
- Infants exhibit sensitivity to both cardiac and respiratory interoceptive signals during the first year of life.
- Developmental patterns differ between cardiac and respiratory interoception, with respiratory sensitivity showing a decline by 18 months.
- Findings support the significant role of interoception in early human development, highlighting distinct maturational timelines for different interoceptive modalities.
Abstract:
Several recent theoretical accounts have posited that interoception, the perception of internal bodily signals, plays a vital role in early human development. Yet, empirical evidence of cardiac interoceptive sensitivity in infants to date has been mixed. Furthermore, existing evidence does not go beyond the perception of cardiac signals and focuses only on the age of 5-7 mo, limiting the generalizability of the results. Here, we used a modified version of the cardiac interoceptive sensitivity paradigm introduced by Maister et al., 2017 in 3-, 9-, and 18-mo-old infants using cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches. Going beyond, we introduce a novel experimental paradigm, namely the iBREATH, to investigate respiratory interoceptive sensitivity in infants. Overall, for cardiac interoceptive sensitivity (total n=135) we find rather stable evidence across ages with infants on average preferring stimuli presented synchronously to their heartbeat. For respiratory interoceptive sensitivity (total n=120) our results show a similar pattern in the first year of life, but not at 18 mo. We did not observe a strong relationship between cardiac and respiratory interoceptive sensitivity at 3 and 9 mo but found some evidence for a relationship at 18 mo. We validated our results using specification curve- and mega-analytic approaches. By examining early cardiac and respiratory interoceptive processing, we provide evidence that infants are sensitive to their interoceptive signals.
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