Kiera Adams, Caroline Catmur, and Geoff Bird. ‘Associations Between Autism and Self-Reported Dimensions of Interoception’. Autism (2026)
doi.org/10.1177/13623613261434431
Interoception is how we sense and interpret signals coming from inside the body. Stomach pangs when you’re hungry, the urge to go to the toilet, shivering with cold, all those inside-body signals. Not everyone reads these signals the same way.
Autism has long been argued to involve differences in how internal signals are processed, but the empirical picture is inconsistent, and research has not established which aspects of interoception are involved. Researchers distinguish three: accuracy (whether someone correctly identifies an interoceptive event), attention (how much of the time someone is aware of these signals, and how important they are), and evaluation (how the signals are interpreted).
This study asked how each dimension relates to autism, both as a diagnosis and as traits in the general population. Questionnaire responses from 519 participants (232 of them autistic) were analysed using nine measures covering interoception, autistic traits, alexithymia, anxiety and reasoning ability.
Autistic participants reported more negative interpretations of their bodily signals than non-autistic participants, once age, gender, alexithymia, anxiety, cognitive ability and other co-occurring conditions were accounted for. Accuracy and attention showed no difference by diagnosis. In the wider sample, however, higher autistic traits predicted all three: more negative evaluation, lower accuracy and higher attention.
BUT…. alexithymia accounted for much of what first looked like an autism effect.
Before it was controlled for, diagnosis appeared to predict accuracy and attention as well; adding alexithymia alone was enough to remove both differences. Controlling for every other covariate except alexithymia left the accuracy difference intact, which points to alexithymia specifically rather than to age, gender, anxiety or co-occurring conditions.
Alexithymia’s role aside, negative thinking about interoceptive events is the one dimension tied to autism at both trait and diagnostic level — which is why it should be the priority for future research, particularly in understanding the links between autism and mental health.
Summary by Finn & Brian