The Filter Detection Task for measurement of breathing-related interoception and metacognition

• Published in: Biological psychology 2021-10, Vol.165, p.108185-108185, Article 108185
• Main Authors: Harrison, Olivia K., Garfinkel, Sarah N., Marlow, Lucy, Finnegan, Sarah L., Marino, Stephanie, Köchli, Laura, Allen, Micah, Finnemann, Johanna, Keur-Huizinga, Laura, Harrison, Samuel J., Stephan, Klaas E., Pattinson, Kyle T.S., Fleming, Stephen M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Breathing; Inspiratory resistance; Interoception; Metacognition
• ISSN: 0301-0511; 1873-6246
• DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2021.108185

•The FDT is a breathing task that measures interoceptive sensitivity and associated metacognition.•An adaptive algorithm maintains performance at the perceptual threshold for detecting inspiratory resistance.•Interoceptive tasks such as this often struggle for computational power due to low trial numbers.•A hierarchical model (HMeta-d) is thus used to quantify both group and individual metacognitive performance.•We developed a novel hierarchical regression model (RHMeta-d) to relate external quantities to metacognition. The study of the brain’s processing of sensory inputs from within the body (‘interoception’) has been gaining rapid popularity in neuroscience, where interoceptive disturbances are thought to exist across a wide range of chronic physiological and psychological conditions. Here we present a task and analysis procedure to quantify specific dimensions of breathing-related interoception, including interoceptive sensitivity, decision bias, metacognitive bias, and metacognitive performance. Two major developments address some of the challenges presented by low trial numbers in interoceptive experiments: (i) a novel adaptive algorithm to maintain task performance at 70–75% accuracy; (ii) an extended hierarchical metacognitive model to estimate regression parameters linking metacognitive performance to relevant (e.g. clinical) variables. We demonstrate the utility of the task and analysis developments, using both simulated data and three empirical datasets. This methodology represents an important step towards accurately quantifying interoceptive dimensions from a simple experimental procedure that is compatible with clinical settings.