From Maternal to Infant Interoception

Interoception, the perception of internal bodily signals such as heartbeat or respiration, is suggested to play an important role in early development. Infants are still developing the ability to regulate themselves and their bodily processes, which is proposed to evolve in interaction with the primary caregiver. However, it is unclear whether infant and caregiver interoception in early development are related and what role caregiver reflective functioning might play in shaping infant interoceptive development. Here, we provide empirical evidence on the relationship between maternal interoception and infant cardiac- and respiratory interoceptive sensitivity. We used a mega-analytic approach by pooling together data from two studies spanning 3-18-month-old infants and their mothers. In our confirmatory analysis, we found evidence for a positive relation between mothers’ performance on a heartbeat detection task and infants’ cardiac, but not respiratory, interoceptive sensitivity at 9 months of age. Exploratory, but not confirmatory, analysis revealed a positive association between self-reported maternal interoception and infant cardiac interoceptive sensitivity at 3 months and infant respiratory interoceptive sensitivity at 9 months of age. Given the mega-analytic nature of pooling together data from different sources, a range of measures were included. To describe the multiverse of potential analyses, we used a descriptive specification curve analysis which illustrated that the operationalization of maternal interoception is related to variability in results. In sum, we present the first evidence that infant and maternal cardiac interoception are related, and provide an empirical basis on the relevance of caregiver interoception for early human development.