Researcher at a glance
- Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London
- Orientation: Individual differences in interoception from the Bird/Catmur alexithymia lineage; interoception as multidomain and multidimensional; the distinction between interoceptive ability and the use of interoceptive signals
Key contributions
- Murphy et al. (2020), in
raw/: develops the Interoceptive Accuracy Scale and supplies the first test of the accuracy/attention distinction against an objective task — self-reported accuracy tracks heartbeat-counting performance, self-reported attention does not.- Murphy, Catmur & Bird (2018, 2019): the 2×2 model of interoceptive measurement — what is assessed (accuracy vs attention) crossed with how (performance vs self-report) — the only partition on Interoceptive taxonomy (Farb et al. Box 1) shaped as a testable design rather than a list.
- Murphy (2022), the commentary in
raw/: proposes interoceptive propensity — the degree to which a person actually uses interoceptive signals versus external cues — as an individual difference absent from every interoceptive taxonomy.- Murphy, Catmur & Bird (2018), ‘Alexithymia is associated with a multidomain, multidimensional failure of interoception’ — the tests behind the wiki’s Bird-lab claim that alexithymia is a general interoceptive deficit.
- Programmatic argument that interoception must be measured as multidomain (cardiac, respiratory, gastric, etc.) and multidimensional (accuracy/attention/insight), and that failures of interoception generalize across domains.
Key papers
Connections
- Debates: Is more interoceptive awareness better?, Is interoception domain-general or organ-specific?
- Related researchers: Sarah N. Garfinkel, Olivier Desmedt, Micah Allen
A Royal Holloway psychologist in the Bird/Catmur interoception lineage — the group behind the claim, load-bearing on Alexithymia, that alexithymia is fundamentally “a general deficit of interoception” (Brewer, Cook & Bird 2016). The wiki had carried her by citation only: Murphy, Catmur & Bird (2018), “Alexithymia is associated with a multidomain, multidimensional failure of interoception,” is the source of the multidomain-failure phrasing that appears wherever the wiki discusses whether interoceptive deficits generalize. Her 2022 commentary is the first paper of hers in raw/, so the page is created under the load-bearing-figure convention (as with Schandry, Katkin, Ehlers).
The through-line: measure interoception properly, then ask what it is for
Murphy’s programme has two moves the wiki should keep distinct.
The measurement move (2018–2020). Interoception is multidomain and multidimensional, and studies that measure one cardiac task and conclude about “interoception” are making an unlicensed generalization. This is the same worry Banellis et al. (2026) later confirmed psychophysically and Desmedt et al. made a formal argument — Murphy’s group stated it early, from the alexithymia side. It has a positive half the critics’ programme lacks: rather than only cataloguing non-convergence, the 2×2 predicts where convergence should appear, and Murphy et al. (2020) found it there. That paper is the wiki’s clearest instance of a taxonomic distinction making a wrong-able prediction and surviving — at n = 33–52, with the same lab’s control-variable findings failing to replicate inside it, so held as a real but slender result.
Worth noting where this places her against the wiki’s other measurement critics. Desmedt concludes the heartbeat task should stop being generalized from; Murphy’s group, having supplied several of the criticisms Desmedt cites, keeps using it and argues the convergence pattern is informative. Same diagnosis of the literature, opposite prescriptions. See Is the heartbeat-counting task a valid measure of cardiac perception?.
The use move (2022). Having insisted the field measure ability carefully, she then argues ability is not the whole story: propensity to use interoceptive signals is a separate individual difference the taxonomies omit. This is her distinctive contribution to the wiki — the internal-vs-external axis as a person-level disposition, and a generalization of Dunn’s gain-term result from accuracy to deployment. See Is more interoceptive awareness better?.
Placement
Murphy responds directly to Garfinkel (the 2022 commentary is on Suksasilp & Garfinkel’s model), sits beside Desmedt on the measurement-critic axis, and beside Allen in holding that interoceptive ability may not generalize across channels. Two studies in raw/ — the 2022 commentary and the 2020 IAS validation — so the page now has one paper with data behind it. The primary Bird/Catmur sources (Murphy, Catmur & Bird 2018, 2019; Brewer, Cook & Bird 2016) remain unread here, so the 2×2 model and the general-deficit claim are still known through their applications rather than their statements.