Recognition of non-emotional bodily states in the self and others: A novel investigation in autism and eating disorders

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Many people with psychiatric conditions (e.g. Autism Spectrum Disorder, Eating Disorders, depression, schizophrenia, etc.) struggle to perceive signals from inside their body (such as feeling their heartbeat and their breathing, and sensing temperature, muscle ache, pain, sickness, and hunger). When people are unable to recognise their own emotions (e.g. disgust, happiness, and anger), they also struggle to recognise other people's emotions, for example from their facial expressions. This project will investigate individuals' ability to recognise others' non-emotional bodily states. It is likely that when people struggle to recognise their own non-emotional bodily states (like hunger, breathing, sickness, etc.), they will also find it difficult to recognise other people's non-emotional bodily states.If somebody struggles to recognise that another person is tired, hungry, sick, cold, or in pain, this will affect how they behave towards that person; they may not offer a drink of water to someone who feels thirsty, or offer to turn up the heating for someone who feels cold. These effective behaviours help us to form friendships and relationships, so failing to behave in an appropriate way can have a negative effect on one's social life, and therefore their psychological wellbeing. More importantly, it is important to recognise these bodily states in other people if we have a caring role, for example if we are parents, caring for elderly people or those with disabilities, or work in the medical profession. We need to be able to recognise how the person we are caring for is feeling so that we can provide the right type of care for them. As people with psychiatric conditions/mental illnesses often struggle to recognise their own non-emotional bodily states, they may also struggle to recognise others' non-emotional bodily states. This could have a negative impact on their social life, as well as their ability to care for other people.This project will investigate the ability to recognise one's own and others' non-emotional bodily states in three groups of people: people with Autism Spectrum Disorder, people with Eating Disorders (anorexia nervosa), and a control group who have no past or present mental illness or medical condition. The project will investigate recognition of different types of information, including photographs, movement, and voices of actors posing the non-emotional bodily states in order to communicate feelings to others, and video recordings of people who are genuinely experiencing the bodily states.The results of this research programme will help us to know how our understanding of our own non-emotional bodily states is linked to our ability to recognise these states in others. This knowledge will make it possible to create interventions that could help those who find recognition of their own and others' non-emotional bodily states difficult. These interventions are likely to be helpful to those with Autism Spectrum Disorder or Eating Disorders, as well as those with other psychiatric conditions who struggle to perceive their own and other people's body states (e.g. those with depression, anxiety, and addiction disorders).