Interoceptive Ability and Body Awareness in Autism Spectrum Disorder
Open accessAbstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been associated with various sensory atypicalities across multiple domains. Interoception, the ability to detect and attend to internal bodily sensations, has been found to moderate the experience of body ownership, a known difference in ASD that may affect social function. However, interoception has not been empirically examined in ASD. In the current study, 45 children (21 with ASD and 24 controls) ages 8 to 17 years completed a heartbeat perception paradigm as a measure of interoceptive ability. A subset of these children also completed the rubber hand illusion task, a multisensory paradigm probing the malleability of perceived body ownership. Although the heartbeat perception paradigm yielded comparable interoceptive awareness (IA) overall across both groups, children with ASD were superior at mentally tracking their heartbeats over longer intervals, suggesting increased sustained attention to internal cues in ASD. In addition, IA was negatively correlated with rubber hand illusion susceptibility in both groups, supporting a previously demonstrated inverse relationship between internal awareness and one's ability to incorporate external stimuli into one's perception of self. We propose a trade-off between attention to internal cues and attention to external cues, whereby attentional resources are disproportionately allocated to internal, rather than external, sensory cues in ASD.
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Such findings align with theories proposing altered interoception and sensory aversions in ASD, which manifest across multiple functional domains.
“Such findings align with theories proposing altered interoception and sensory aversions in ASD, which manifest across multiple functional domains, including motor output, feeding routines, and sleep patterns [44].”
From The Prevalence and Clinical Significance of Toe Walking in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Cross-Sectional Study in an Italian Pediatric Sample (2025) · cites this paper as [44]
The Introduction describes atypical sensory processing across multiple modalities in ASD, and the Discussion proposes atypical processing of interoceptive cues. The paper does not establish sensory aversions or their manifestation in motor output, feeding routines, and sleep patterns; its mention of food concerns a reported neural response to pictures of food while fasting, not feeding routines. No page numbers are supplied in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.87)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredAutism appears to affect HCT performance differently at different intervals, with autistic children numerically outperforming neurotypical children at long intervals.
“Relatedly, autism appears to affect HCT performance differently at different intervals, with autistic children numerically outperforming neurotypical children at long intervals (Schauder et al., 2014).”
From Atypical interoception as a common risk factor for psychopathology: A review (2021) · cites this paper as Schauder et al., 2014
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“Such findings align with theories proposing altered interoception and sensory aversions in ASD, which manifest across multiple functional domains, including motor output, feeding routines, and sleep patterns [44].”
- Authors
- Schauder, K. B., Mash, L. E., Bryant, L. K., & Cascio, C. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Rochester (US)
- Vanderbilt University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Cascio, Carissa J.
- Venue
- Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-03
- Volume
- 131
- Pages
- 193-200
- ISSN
- 0022-0965 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4303499
- OpenAlex
- W2094877663
- Cited by
- 187
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 5
- FWCI
- 5.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Slifka/Ritvo Innovation in Autism Research Award
- National Institute of Mental Health (K01 MH090232)
- The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (UL1 TR000445)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Keywords
- autism spectrum disorder, interoception, interoceptive awareness, body awareness, body ownership, heartbeat perception, rubber hand illusion, multisensory integration, attention allocation, children
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Attention, Awareness, Body Image, Child, Child Development Disorders, Pervasive, Cues, Female, Heart Rate, Humans, Illusions, Male, Self Concept, Visual Perception
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