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Emotion‐processing deficit in alexithymia
Author(s) -
Roedema Thomas M.,
Simons Robert F.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1017/s0048577299980290
Subject(s) - alexithymia , psychology , arousal , skin conductance , valence (chemistry) , facial expression , developmental psychology , toronto alexithymia scale , heart rate , facial electromyography , audiology , cognitive psychology , clinical psychology , social psychology , communication , blood pressure , medicine , physics , quantum mechanics , biomedical engineering , radiology
College undergraduates were identified as alexithymic or control, based on their scores on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS; Taylor, Ryan, & Bagby, 1985). All subjects were presented standardized emotion‐eliciting color slides for 6 s while facial muscle, heart rate, and skin conductance activity were recorded. Stimuli were presented a second time while subjects were asked to provide emotion self‐reports using a paper‐and‐pencil version of the Self‐Assessment Manikin (SAM; Lang, 1980) and to generate a list of words describing their emotional reaction to each slide. Consistent with the definition of alexithymia as a syndrome characterized, in part, by a deficit in the identification of emotion states, high TAS subjects supplied fewer emotion‐related words than did controls to describe their response to the slides. Alexithymics also indicated less variation along the arousal dimension of the SAM, produced fewer specific skin conductance responses and showed less heart rate deceleration to the slides, regardless of category. No valence‐related differences between alexithymic and control subjects were noted.