Interoceptive accuracy is associated with perceived environmental change under sensory deprivation

Abstract

When external sensory input is reduced, perceptual experience may become more dependent on internally generated information, bodily signals, and prior expectations. Sensory deprivation therefore provides a useful context for examining how people perceive changes in the surrounding environment when ordinary exteroceptive evidence is unavailable. The present study investigated whether interoceptive awareness and physiological indices of arousal are associated with subjective reports of perceived environmental change under sensory deprivation. Participants sat in an anechoic chamber while wearing a blindfold and earplugs and continuously reported the perceived intensity of environmental change in the room using a throttle device. Electrodermal activity and heart rate were recorded throughout the task. Participants also completed a heartbeat counting task and questionnaires assessing interoceptive sensibility, fantasy proneness, uncertainty, and subjective experiences during the task. Interoceptive accuracy was positively correlated with report intensity, report duration, and report count. Mixed-effects analyses further showed significant interactions between time and electrodermal activity, indexed by non-specific skin conductance responses and skin conductance level, indicating that the relationship between physiological tendency and perceived environmental change reports varied over the sensory-deprivation period. Post-task ratings showed that visual, tactile, and feeling-based experiences are associated with throttle responses, suggesting that perceived environmental change under sensory deprivation was not a unitary experience. Together, these findings indicate that objective sensitivity to bodily signals and electrodermal activity are linked to the perception of environmental change when reliable external sensory information is unavailable.