Understanding interoception across emotional contexts: development and validation of the Emotion-Linked Interoceptive...

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Health Sciences

Background:

• Interoceptive awareness, the sense of the internal state of the body, is crucial for emotional regulation.
• Existing measures often lack specificity regarding emotional contexts.
• Developing context-specific measures is vital for understanding nuanced interoceptive processing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate the Emotion-Linked Interoceptive Awareness (ELIA) scale.
• To assess bodily sensations within specific emotional contexts.
• To explore the relationship between ELIA scores, psychological traits, and mind-body practice.

Main Methods:

• Four online studies were conducted for scale development and validation.
• Item generation involved free-text reports of bodily sensations during emotions.
• Factor structure, convergent validity, reliability, and associations with psychological traits were examined.

Main Results:

• A 39-item bifactor scale (ELIA) was developed with a general factor and subscales for Positive Emotions, Anxiety, and Irritation.
• ELIA scores showed convergence with existing interoceptive awareness measures and moderate test-retest reliability.
• Positive Emotions subscale scores correlated with lower anxiety and alexithymia; Anxiety and Irritation subscales correlated with higher levels of these traits.

Conclusions:

• The ELIA scale provides a validated, emotion-specific measure of interoceptive awareness.
• Findings highlight the importance of context-specific interoceptive assessment for understanding adaptive and maladaptive attentional styles.
• The ELIA scale can differentiate between various interoceptive processing styles and inform research on mind-body interventions.