Associations Between Interoception and Sensory Processing in Preschool Children

This study examined how caregiver-reported interoceptive functioning relates to caregiver-reported sensory processing characteristics in typically developing preschool children aged 2-5 years. Interoceptive functioning was assessed using the caregiver-report Dynamic Metacognitive Interoception Measure (DMIM), and sensory processing characteristics were assessed with the caregiver-report Sensory Processing Measure-Preschool (SPM-P). Analyses were based on data from 240 children and included correlation analyses, hierarchical regression models, and a small set of machine-learning methods used for complementary purposes. Across domains, interoceptive functioning and sensory processing characteristics were inversely associated. Moderate negative associations were observed between overall DMIM scores and sensory processing characteristics. Awareness and discrimination showed the clearest associations with tactile processing (ρ = -.41) and social participation (ρ = -.46), with p values below .001. Age-related differences were modest, with older children showing slightly higher interoceptive scores and lower sensory processing difficulty scores. Machine-learning analyses explained a similar proportion of variance (R² ≈ .31-.41) as the regression models and pointed to the same interoceptive dimensions as most relevant. Overall, the findings provide a descriptive view of how interoceptive and sensory characteristics appear together in early childhood within a community sample.