Interoceptive accuracy is associated with benefits in decision making in children

Measuring interoception from infancy to childhood: A scoping review

BACKGROUND

Interoception is the ability to perceive, understand, and respond to internal bodily signals. Despite its importance, our knowledge of interoceptive abilities in the early stages of development remains limited. Delays or atypical patterns in interoceptive development may serve as early indicators of potential developmental psychopathology. Thus, assessing interoception in infancy and early childhood is essential for advancing our understanding of both typical and atypical developmental pathways.

OBJECTIVE

This scoping review summarises existing evidence regarding interoception from infancy to childhood and identifies the most common methods for assessing interoception in neurotypical pediatric populations.

DESIGN

A literature review was performed through a robust search of three scientific databases.

RESULTS

Among 663 studies, 24 articles met the inclusion criteria. The most commonly used methods in infancy were looking-time paradigms and brain-based implicit measures, such as Heart-Evoked Potentials (HEP). Researchers predominantly used child-adapted versions of Heart Tracking Tasks (HTT) for preschool-aged children. The primary methods for investigating interoceptive abilities among school-aged children included HTTs and self-report measures. Only one study used fMRI to examine mind-body connections in childhood, while two relied on parent reports.

CONCLUSIONS

This review offers a comprehensive overview of past and current methods for measuring interoception in the literature. It highlights the strengths and limitations of existing methodologies and presents recommendations to enhance our understanding of interoception in early human development.

Links between self-regulation patterns and prosocial behavior trajectories from middle childhood to early adolescence: a longitudinal study

Prosocial behavior that conforms to social norms and serves the good of others requires particularly high self-regulatory competences, because it is often in contrast with one's own interests. It is unknown which self-regulatory competences are particularly important for prosocial-behavior development and whether they may distinguish between children on different prosocial-behavior trajectories. This longitudinal study examined differences in self-regulatory competences, including inhibition, emotional reactivity, planning behavior, emotion regulation, working-memory updating, affective decision making, flexibility, and delay of gratification, between trajectories of prosocial behavior in 1,657 German 6- to 13-year-olds (52% female). LCGA suggested four trajectories of stable high, stable low, increasing, and decreasing prosocial behavior. MANOVAs showed differences between trajectories in inhibition and emotional reactivity at all three measurement points, as well as planning behavior at the second measurement point. Early patterns of these self-regulatory skills may help identifying children at risk for impaired long-term prosocial-behavior development and should primarily be addressed by prevention and intervention measures.

The Association Between Longitudinal Changes in Body Mass Index and Longitudinal Changes in Hours of Screen Time, and Hours of Physical Activity in German Children

INTRODUCTION

The association of screen time and physical activity with body weight in children has been investigated in cross-sectional and prospective studies, as well as randomized controlled trials. The present study extends previous research by examining how longitudinal within-person changes in screen time and physical activity relate to changes in Body Mass Index (BMI) in children, and how changes in screen time and physical activity relate to each other.

METHODS

The data for the present study came from the PIER Youth Study. Data were collected from 971 children and their parents at two time points approximately 1 year apart. A multilevel modeling approach with measurement occasions nested within children was used to model changes in BMI across age.

RESULTS

Within a child, a change in daily hours of TV viewing was associated with a corresponding change in BMI, whereas a change in daily hours of physical activity was associated with an opposite change in BMI. Within-person correlations between changes in screen time and physical activity were small but positive.

CONCLUSION

The present findings have important implications for interventions to reduce and prevent childhood overweight and obesity. Specifically, interventions should focus on both reducing daily TV viewing and promoting physical activity.

Respiratory phases modulate visuo-spatial attention: Evidence from line bisection and landmark tasks

This study explores the influence of respiratory phases on visuo-spatial attention during neuropsychological assessments with healthy adults. In Experiment 1, participants performed line bisection at peak inhalation vs. peak exhalation. Experiments 2 and 3 studied the landmark task, where participants determined which side of a pre-bisected line was shorter, again correlated with the respiratory phase. Experiment 1 revealed leftward bias during inhalation and rightward bias during exhalation. Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed these results in the landmark task. These findings suggest that respiration-related signals modulate the allocation of visuo-spatial attention.

Breathing shifts visuo-spatial attention

Considering recent findings that breathing influences cognitive processes, two experiments explored the relationship between breathing and visuo-spatial attention. In Experiment 1, a lateralized probe detection task was inserted into the breathing cycles of 21 healthy adults to probe effects of breathing on the distribution of spatial attention. In Experiment 2 (N = 26), the Posner cueing task measured breathing-contingent detection speed for lateralized probes after endogenous or exogenous cueing. We consistently found faster responses for left probes after exhalation and for right probes after inhalation in both experiments. Breathing also affected the speed of re-alignment of spatial attention after invalid cueing in Experiment 2. This novel breathing bias shows that our ability to encode visuo-spatial information systematically fluctuates during breathing.