This past semester in the Fall of 2019 I took an advanced methods course in psychology for my neuroscience major. Dr. Brindle taught the class, and we centered our research around interoception. I decided to investigate the relationship between interoception and proprioception in two samples at Washington and Lee: athletes and non-athletes. I found nearly significant results (p = 0.11)! Athletes appeared to have a higher positive correlation between interoceptive accuracy and proprioceptive accuracy, as I had predicted. Considering we had a small sample size of just over 20 participants, it’s awesome that we found these results. Our effect sizes were relatively large as well.
The course was new at Washington and Lee this year, but I think it’s an excellent addition to the curriculum for the neuroscience major. I can’t wait to see what the lab studies next year, and I wish that I could take the class again to keep building on my research question.
I learned how to conduct statistics in SPSS and how to hook up and read an EKG! Awesome, right? If you want to see more about my research question, methodology, or results, you can take a look at my report.
Here’s one of the multiple pictures I took to demonstrate my proprioception task to the other experimenters. Other angles we measured included 20°, 70°, and 90°. People tended to have the most success recreating the 90° angle!
45 Degree Angle for Proprioception Task