Cardiac sensitivity in children: Sex differences and its relationship to parameters of emotional processing

In adults, the level of ability to perceive one's own body signals plays an important role for many concepts of emotional experience as demonstrated for emotion processing or emotion regulation. Representative data on perception of body signals and its emotional correlates in children is lacking. Therefore, the present study investigated the cardiac sensitivity of 1,350 children between 6 and 11 years of age in a heartbeat perception task. Our main findings demonstrated the distribution of cardiac sensitivity in children as well as associations with interpersonal emotional intelligence and adaptability. Furthermore, independent of body mass index, boys showed a significantly higher cardiac sensitivity than girls. We conclude that cardiac sensitivity in children appears to show weaker but similar characteristics and relations to emotional parameters as found in adults, so that a dynamic developmental process can be assumed.