Effect of subconscious changes in bodily response on thought shifting in people with accurate interoception

Abstract

Our thought states shift from one state to another from moment to moment. The relationship between the thought shifting and bodily responses is yet to be directly examined. This exploratory study examined the influence of cardiovascular reactivity and interoception—sensing an internal bodily state—on the shifting of thought states. Participants (N = 100, 70 women) completed two tasks: the heartbeat counting task (HCT) and the vigilance task (VT). We assessed their interoceptive accuracy through their performance on the HCT. The VT was a simple sustained attention task in which participants pressed a key when the target stimulus appeared and were asked to report their thoughts. We presented subliminal vibration stimuli to induce alterations in heart rate (i.e., vibration block). Results showed that participants with higher interoceptive accuracy reported more continuation of self-referential thought (about past episodes and future plans regarding themselves) during the vibration block than did those with lower interoceptive accuracy. These results suggest that individuals with higher interoceptive accuracy are more likely to be influenced by their subliminal bodily response, resulting in divergent attention from the task and intermittent self-referential thought.