What Do Measures of Self-Report Interoception Measure? Insights from A Systematic Review, Latent Factor Analysis, and Network Approach

Author: Olivier Desmedt1, Alexandre Heeren2, Olivier Corneille3, Olivier Luminet4
Affiliation:
1 Psychological Science Research Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; Fund for Scientific Research - Belgium (FRS-FNRS). Electronic address: olivier.desmedt@uclouvain.be.
2 Psychological Science Research Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; Fund for Scientific Research - Belgium (FRS-FNRS); Institute of Neuroscience, UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium.
3 Psychological Science Research Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
4 Psychological Science Research Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; Fund for Scientific Research - Belgium (FRS-FNRS).
Conference/Journal: Biol Psychol
Date published: 2022 Feb 9
Other: Special Notes: doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2022.108289. , Word Count: 140


Recent conceptualizations of interoception suggest several facets to this construct, including "interoceptive sensibility" and "self-report interoceptive scales", both of which are assessed with questionnaires. Although these conceptual efforts have helped move the field forward, uncertainty remains regarding whether current measures converge on their measurement of a common construct. To address this question, we first identified -via a systematic review- the most cited questionnaires of interoceptive sensibility. Then, we examined their correlations, their overall factorial structure, and their network structure in a large community sample (n = 1003). The results indicate that these questionnaires tap onto distinct constructs, with low overall convergence and interrelationships between questionnaire items. This observation mitigates the interpretation and replicability of findings in self-report interoception research. We call for a better match between constructs and measures.

Keywords: Interoception; exploratory factor analysis; interoceptive sensibility; network analysis.

PMID: 35150768 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2022.108289

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