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Psychiatr Q (2011) 82:245252 DOI 10.1007/s11126-010-9166-7
ORIGINAL PAPER
Ornella Montebarocci Paola Surcinelli
Nicola Rossi Bruno Baldaro
Published online: 25 December 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract Although previous studies seem to indicate that alexithymic individuals have a decit in their ability to recognize emotional stimuli, none had studied the relationship between alexithymia and verbal and non verbal abilities and their possible role in emotion recognition. The aim of the present study is to further investigate the relationship between alexithymia and emotion recognition ability. In particular we studied whether this relationship is mediated by verbal ability. Thirty-ve students were selected from a group of91 University students previously screened for alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale; TAS-20). Participants were shown black and white slides depicting facial expression of the following emotions: anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, happiness and fear. Compared to low alexithymic participants, and, more importantly, taking verbal IQ into account, high alexithymic and low alexithymic participants did not differ in emotion recognition.
Keywords Alexithymia Verbal ability Emotion recognition
Introduction
The aim of the present study is to evaluate the association among alexithymia, emotion recognition and verbal ability. Alexithymia comprises a constellation of cognitive and behavioral characteristics related to the expression and experience of affect. The salient features of the construct are difculty identifying and describing feelings, constricted fantasy, and an externally oriented cognitive style. According to Lane and Schwartz [1] these overt manifestations are expressions of a decit in the mental representation of emotions.
Several studies have examined the relationship between alexithymia and various aspects of emotional processing. Results are so far controversial. Some investigators observed no signicant difference between alexithymic and non alexithymic students in the ability to recognize posed facial expressions of emotion and indicated that alexithymia is not associated with diminished accuracy in interpreting emotion-relevant information [24]. Others
O. Montebarocci (&) P. Surcinelli N. Rossi B. Baldaro
Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat 5, 40127 Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected]
Alexithymia, Verbal Ability and Emotion Recognition
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researches observed that people with alexithymia process facial expressions with decreased recognition accuracy and that this may account for the disorder of affect regulation [57].
Following Parker et al. [8], cognitive skills and in particular language competence, seem to play...