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Comparative Study
. 2025 Jun;62(6):e70078.
doi: 10.1111/psyp.70078.

Cardiac Interoceptive Accuracy: An Empirical Comparison of Three Ability Measures

Eszter Ferentzi  1   2 , Luca Vig  1   3 , János Körmendi  1   2   3 , Michael Witthöft  4 , Alexander L Gerlach  5 , Anna Pohl  5
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Cardiac Interoceptive Accuracy: An Empirical Comparison of Three Ability Measures

Eszter Ferentzi et al. Psychophysiology. 2025 Jun.

Abstract

There are several measures used to assess one's ability to perceive their heartbeat (cardiac interoceptive accuracy). These can be categorized into two main task types: tracking (e.g., motor tracking, heartbeat counting) and discrimination (e.g., two- and multi-interval). The recently developed cardiovascular signal detection task (cvSDT) combines the advantages of heartbeat counting and multi-interval discrimination tasks. It is an open question of how the three tasks relate to each other. This study compares all three methods in a sample of young adults (n = 73, 66% female). Efforts were made to identify heartbeat perceivers. Expectation and confidence ratings about perceived performance and interoception questionnaires were also administered. We found a relation between tracking and cvSDT(ρ = 0.401, p < 0.001); the multi-interval task was unrelated to both other task types (tracking: ρ = -0.103, p = 0.398; cvSDT: ρ = -0.103, p = 0.398). Multiple linear regression analyses (with the control of resting heart rate, body fat percentage, and sex) confirmed these results. 27.4% of the sample were heartbeat perceivers according to the heartbeat counting task, 28.8% according to the multi-interval discrimination task, and 12.3% according to the cvSDT. There was only one heartbeat perceiver according to all three tasks. Among questionnaires and tasks, only one connection was revealed: the Body Awareness Questionnaire related to the bias in cvSDT (ρ = -0.283*, p < 0.05). In summary, the three tasks likely assess partly different abilities. The investigation of expectation and confidence also supports this assumption. When choosing the method of cardiac interoception, characteristics should be considered to fit the research question.

Keywords: cardiac interoceptive accuracy; cvSDT; heartbeat counting task; heartbeat discrimination task; heartbeat perception; interoception.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Generative AI and AI‐Assisted Technologies in the Writing Process: The authors did not use generative AI technologies for the preparation of this work.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Study protocol. Q1—How accurately do you think you will perceive your heartbeats? Q2—How accurately do you think you perceived your heartbeats?
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Scatter plots of the variables representing the three heartbeat perception tasks. HBC = score of the heartbeat counting task; d' =  d' value of cardiovascular signal detection task; IQR = IQR of the multi‐interval discrimination task.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Number of synchronous ratings in the multi‐interval task. Heartbeat perceivers and non‐perceivers were identified with χ2 analysis (good: p < 0.05).
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