Interoceptive awareness and heart rate response in regard to capacity to recognize own emotions

Abstract

Many studies demonstrate the importance of cardiac signals sensitivity in recognizing one's own emotional processes. The present study investigates the relationship between interoceptive awareness, emotional experience, cardiovascular reactivity, heart rate and galvanic skin responses to different emotional stimulations from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). During 4 experimental sets 60 participants (9 male) were confronted with neutral and emotional IAPS pictures. After each set, participants appraised emotional experiences and interoceptive awareness on an 11-point Likert scale. Heart rate changes were recorded during the baseline and during slide presentations. At the end, participants flled in the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire and Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Results replicate in Russian participants the results of American and European investigations and add new details on the issue of the relationship between the perception of interoceptive signals and recognition processing of one's own emotions.