ACCURACY OF HEARTBEAT PERCEPTION IN PANIC DISORDER, SOCIAL PHOBIA, AND NONANXIOUS SUBJECTS

Recent research on psychosocial models of panic disorder has demonstra ted that panic patients become anxious about, and tend to focus on, th e physical sensations of panic (e.g., palpitations, dizziness, and bre athlessness). To assess whether patients' hypervigilance for panic sen sations is associated with heightened awareness of internal sensations , subjects with panic disorder, social phobia and no mental disorder w ere asked to count heartbeats at rest and following a period of exerci se, while actual heartbeats were recorded using a polygraph. The group s did not differ in heartbeat awareness at rest. Following exercise, a ll groups became more aware of cardiac sensations, again with no betwe en-group differences. Despite a lack of group differences, several var iables were positively related to accuracy of heartbeat perception, in cluding self-reported anxiety over relevant sensations and subjects' c onfidence in their estimations. In addition, actual heart rate was neg atively related to accuracy of heartbeat tracking. The implications of these results are discussed.