Interoceptive grounding of conceptual knowledge: new insight from an interoceptive-exteroceptive categorization task of concepts

The role of interoception, the sensing of internal bodily signals, in shaping our understanding of concepts remains an intriguing and understudied area of research. Here, we investigate the interoceptive foundation of conceptual representation, particularly for abstract concepts compared to concrete ones. Using a novel mouse-tracking paradigm, participants categorized various types of abstract and concrete concepts (i.e., abstract emotional, abstract philosophical, concrete natural and concrete artifact) as interoceptive (i.e., experienced through internal bodily sensations) or exteroceptive (i.e., experienced through the five perceptual senses). Results on the reaction times show that abstract-emotional concepts were more readily classified as interoceptive than abstract-philosophical concepts, emphasizing the importance of the interoceptive dimension for this category. Movement trajectories showed the implicit activation of interoceptive features also during the categorization of concrete natural concepts. To account for individual differences in interoceptive accuracy (i.e., the ability to accurately perceive visceral signals), participants performed a cardiac interoceptive task (i.e., the heartbeat counting task). Higher interoceptive accuracy was associated with faster categorization speeds, particularly for concrete-natural concepts. Taken together, our findings emphasize the multifaceted nature of conceptual knowledge where the interoceptive dimension plays a key role.