Dr Rosie Donaghy
About
My qualifications
ResearchResearch interests
I am a Research Fellow on a project with Dr Jennifer Murphy examining sex differences in interoception (the perception of internal bodily sensations) and mental health, and links to the menstrual cycle. I am interested in individual differences and changes in interoception throughout the lifespan, in particular during periods of substantial physical change i.e., infancy and toddlerhood, puberty and adolescence, pregnancy and the menopause. During my PhD I completed a longitudinal investigation into the development of interoception across infancy and early toddlerhood, and its links to self- and social- development. I have a keen interest in early development and the parent-infant relationship, drawing on transactional approaches to understand developmental change over time.
Research interests
I am a Research Fellow on a project with Dr Jennifer Murphy examining sex differences in interoception (the perception of internal bodily sensations) and mental health, and links to the menstrual cycle. I am interested in individual differences and changes in interoception throughout the lifespan, in particular during periods of substantial physical change i.e., infancy and toddlerhood, puberty and adolescence, pregnancy and the menopause. During my PhD I completed a longitudinal investigation into the development of interoception across infancy and early toddlerhood, and its links to self- and social- development. I have a keen interest in early development and the parent-infant relationship, drawing on transactional approaches to understand developmental change over time.
Publications
Models of interoception, the processing of internal bodily signals, highlight infancy as a key period for interoceptive learning. Given the potential importance of this developmental period, there has been increasing focus on the measurement of cardiac interoceptive accuracy in infancy. In this paper, we argue that despite progress in this area, the current methods for assessing cardiac interoceptive accuracy in infancy suffer from many of the same limitations as tasks of cardiac interoceptive accuracy employed in adult samples. To progress work in this area, this paper critically reviews methods of cardiac interoceptive accuracy employed in adults and infants and provides several recommendations for optimizing the measurement of cardiac interoceptive accuracy in infants. These include, but are not limited to, methodological choices regarding the presentation of stimuli, the use of control tasks, the analysis strategy employed, and the importance of considering state effects.