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Description: The ability to detect internal bodily signals measured via objective tasks is referred to as interoceptive sensitivity (Garfinkel & Critchley, 2013). In addition to sensitivity, response tendencies used when processing interoceptive stimuli are relevant for the investigation of psychopathological processes. People can use either liberal (‘better safe than sorry’) or conservative strategies (‘wait and see’). A liberal response tendency is associated with various mental illnesses, such as somatic symptom disorder and illness anxiety disorder (Wolters, Gerlach & Pohl, 2022). As the heartbeat represents a robust body signal and can be easily recorded, body perception is often measured via heartbeat perception (HBP) tasks (Phillips, Jones, Rieger, & Snell, 1999). A widely used task for assessing HBP is the mental tracking task by Schandry (1981). However, the Schandry task does not allow to differentiate between sensitivity and bias. As most people underestimate their heartbeat, liberal response tendencies can erroneously lead to higher sensitivity scores in the Schandry task (Pohl et al., 2021). A recently developed paradigm based on signal detection theory (SDT) allows the assessment of both, sensitivity and response tendencies in heartbeat perception separately (cardiovascular signal detection task, cvSDT for short; Pohl et al., 2021). In the first version of the cvSDT, participants were asked to decide whether their perceived heartbeats (e.g. ‘6’) were within or outside (‘less’ or ‘more’) a specified interval of three heartbeats (e.g. ‘7-9’). However, the response format and some of the analyses in the preliminary study were not ideal. The option of answering ‘less’/’more’ may have encouraged learning of participants. In addition, the assignment of answers should not be based on content (the choice of the answer alternative ‘more’ with the correct interval was classified as a ‘false alarm’, as the heartbeat was overestimated here), but rather follow signal detection theory. To solve the aforementioned methodological problems, we adapted the cvSDT as follows: As response format, the target interval is presented accompanied by the response options “yes” and “no”. Participants are asked to decide whether the presented interval of heartbeats actually matches the sensed number of heartbeats. Additionally, the choice of the interval will be classified as false alarm in case of the interval being wrong and regardless of whether more or fewer heartbeats were measured. In order to validate the new version of the cvSDT, the Schandry task and the signal detection task will be presented to an analog sample. Several questionnaires regarding negative affect, emotion and body perception (i.e. somatic symptom burden) will be assessed and associated to SDT parameters.