Do I feel sadness, fear or both? Comparing self-reported alexithymia and emotional task-performance in children with many or few somatic complaints

Abstract

Children with many somatic complaints seem to report problems with emotion identification and communication ('alexithymia'). The aim of this study was to verify whether children with somatic complaints do indeed show signs of alexithymia. We compared 35 children (M age ¼ 10.99, SD ¼ 13 months) with many somatic complaints with 34 children (M age ¼ 11.03, SD ¼ 12 months) reporting few complaints on the basis of a self-report alexithymia scale and tasks that require the skill to identify and communicate emotions: an emotional attention task, a structured interview about own emotions, and a mixed-emotion task. Children were also asked about the intensity of the reported emotions. Compared to children with few complaints, children with many complaints seemed to have higher self-reports of alexithymia. However, these results were explained by difficulty in communicating negative internal states and experiencing indefinable internal states, rather than difficulty in identifying emotions. In addition, children with many complaints reported higher intensities of fear and sadness. The children did not differ in their attention to emotions or causes of emotions. Children with many somatic complaints more often described previous emotional experiences and showed better abilities in identifying multiple emotions. Children with many somatic complaints thus show more negative emotional processing, but the alexithymia-hypothesis was unsupported.

Alexithymia in juvenile primary headache sufferers: a pilot study

“…The hypothesis is in line with Demjen et al [59], who said that affective distress and difficulty in expressing feelings correlate with the “dimensions” of headache, such as intensity and duration of attacks. This reminds us of a recent study investigating alexithymia that compared children with numerous somatic complaints with cases with few somatic complaints: the former had difficulty communicating negative internal states and experiencing indefinable internal states, as well as revealing greater intensities of fear and sadness [60]. …”

“…Alexithymia would thus represent a risk factor for the onset of medical or psychiatric, organic or functional disorders [47, 48, 60]. …”

Children's perceptions of the relationship with the teacher: Associations with appraisals and internalizing problems in middle childhood

“…Ciarrochi et al (2007) showed that children who tend to make more depressive appraisals for events reported more fear and sadness one year later. Moreover, Jellesma et al (2009) showed that children with many somatic complaints described more and stronger negative emotions in response to various scenarios than children with few complaints. Robinson, Garber, and Hilsman (1995) demonstrated that negative appraisals are positively associated with depressive symptoms.…”

“…In the literature on internalizing problems, children's appraisals of situations are often referred to as a potential mediator of (interpersonal) stressors and the development of internalizing problems (e.g., Ciarrochi, Heaven, & Davies, 2007;Jellesma, Rieffe, Terwogt, & Westenberg, 2009). More specifically, when children appraise situations negatively, they also often experience negative affect.…”

Depression partially mediates the relationship between alexithymia and somatization in a sample of healthy children

“…The authors found that mood states mediated the relationship between alexithymia and internalizing symptoms, but alexithymia also contributed to internalizing symptoms above the effects of mood, suggesting that an independent relationship with alexithymia and somatization also exists. Yet, in another recent study, Jellesma, Rieffe, Terwogt & Westenberg (2009) found that the children reporting many somatic symptoms did not have an impaired ability to identify emotions, as compared to children reporting few somatic symptoms. However, those reporting many somatic symptoms did have difficulty identifying and communicating negative internal states (i.e., moods) but were better able to identify multiple emotions as compared to children reporting few somatic complaints.…”