Facial emotion recognition and alexithymia in adults with somatoform disorders

Gil, Francisco; Ridout, Nathan; Kessler, Henrik; Neuffer, Michaela; Schoechlin, Claudia; Traue, Harald C.; Nickel, Marius

doi:10.1002/da.20456

Cited by 76 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 60 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, these two groups had similar FEEL performances and the authors failed to find any association between alexithymia scores and the FEEL performances in either group. Pedrosa Gil et al [57] reported greater difficulties in identifying feelings (DIF subscore) and worse FEEL performances among somatoform disorder patients relative to healthy controls. Yet, when TAS-20 total scores were entered as a covariate, the group effect for FEEL performances disappeared.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Importantly, three of these studies have attempted to disentangle the effects of depression, anxiety and alexithymia. These studies revealed that alexithymia partially or even totally explained the between-group differences in the labelling of EFEs (alexithymia as a covariate or as a predictor in regression analyses) [57], [59], [60]. This suggests that the emotional recognition impairments that have been reported in a variety of clinical disorders may be partly attributed to comorbid alexithymia rather than to the clinical status of the individual, particularly for Autism Spectrum and Eating Disorders.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Kessler et al [56] and Pedrosa Gil et al [57] used the Facially Expressed Emotion Labelling paradigm (FEEL [58]) in which one EFE is presented right after the presentation of a neutral face of the same person. Participants have to label the target EFE, with higher score indicating better performance.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Alexithymia and the Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions (EFEs): Systematic Review, Unanswered Questions and Further Perspectives

et al. 2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties in identifying, differentiating and describing feelings. A high prevalence of alexithymia has often been observed in clinical disorders characterized by low social functioning. This review aims to assess the association between alexithymia and the ability to decode emotional facial expressions (EFEs) within clinical and healthy populations. More precisely, this review has four main objectives: (1) to assess if alexithymia is a better predictor of the ability to decode EFEs than the diagnosis of clinical disorder; (2) to assess the influence of comorbid factors (depression and anxiety disorder) on the ability to decode EFE; (3) to investigate if deficits in decoding EFEs are specific to some levels of processing or task types; (4) to investigate if the deficits are specific to particular EFEs. Twenty four studies (behavioural and neuroimaging) were identified through a computerized literature search of Psycinfo, PubMed, and Web of Science databases from 1990 to 2010. Data on methodology, clinical characteristics, and possible confounds were analyzed. The review revealed that: (1) alexithymia is associated with deficits in labelling EFEs among clinical disorders, (2) the level of depression and anxiety partially account for the decoding deficits, (3) alexithymia is associated with reduced perceptual abilities, and is likely to be associated with impaired semantic representations of emotional concepts, and (4) alexithymia is associated with neither specific EFEs nor a specific valence. These studies are discussed with respect to processes involved in the recognition of EFEs. Future directions for research on emotion perception are also discussed.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Alexithymia and the Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions (EFEs): Systematic Review, Unanswered Questions and Further Perspectives

et al. 2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, Pedrosa Gil et al 116 found significant impairments of emotion recognition in patients with somatoform disorders. Crucially, however, this group deficit was no longer evident once alexithymia was accounted for statistically, suggesting that emotion recognition difficulties were due to elevated levels of alexithymia, and not somatoform disorder per se .…”

Section: Extending the Argument?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mixed emotions: the contribution of alexithymia to the emotional symptoms of autism

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is widely accepted that autism is associated with disordered emotion processing and, in particular, with deficits of emotional reciprocity such as impaired emotion recognition and reduced empathy. However, a close examination of the literature reveals wide heterogeneity within the autistic population with respect to emotional competence. Here we argue that, where observed, emotional impairments are due to alexithymia—a condition that frequently co-occurs with autism—rather than a feature of autism per se. Alexithymia is a condition characterized by a reduced ability to identify and describe one's own emotion, but which results in reduced empathy and an impaired ability to recognize the emotions of others. We briefly review studies of emotion processing in alexithymia, and in autism, before describing a recent series of studies directly testing this ‘alexithymia hypothesis'. If found to be correct, the alexithymia hypothesis has wide-reaching implications for the study of autism, and how we might best support subgroups of autistic individuals with, and without, accompanying alexithymia. Finally, we note the presence of elevated rates of alexithymia, and inconsistent reports of emotional impairments, in eating disorders, schizophrenia, substance abuse, Parkinson's Disease, multiple sclerosis and anxiety disorders. We speculate that examining the contribution of alexithymia to the emotional symptoms of these disorders may bear fruit in the same way that it is starting to do in autism.

show abstract

“…These deficits have been found with tasks in which participants were required to reply in a very short period of time (Pedrosa et al, 2009), as well as in those with masked stimuli to make it difficult to recognize them (Kugel et al, 2008;Reker et al, 2010), and with static emotional stimuli, such as FACS, and dynamic videos (Kätsyri, Saalasti, Tiippana, von Wendt, & Sams, 2008;Ridout, Thomas, & Wallis, 2010) (for a review, see Grynberg et al, 2012).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Recognition of Emotional Facial Expressions in Alexithymia

Martínez‐Sánchez¹,

Fernández-Abascal²,

Sánchez-Pérez³

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Alexithymia is a personality trait which is associated with difficulties in identifying and verbalizing emotions. Previous studies have shown a significant association between alexithymia and a lack of ability to decode emotional facial expressions. Three groups of university students (N = 1645) were formed by splitting the sample based on Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) scores. All participants performed an emotional expression recognition task, using the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes'' method. The experimenter presented images of the eye-region of the faces of actors and actresses. As expected, results showed that alexithymics performed worse on ability to infer others' emotiona l sta tes expressed by the eyes. These results suggest that alexithymia is associated with impaired emotion recognition, that is most apparent when processing capacity is restricted, high-alexithymic individuals could develop less detailed perceptual representations of facial expression which might impair the process of drawing conclusions about its emotional significance.

show abstract

Facial emotion recognition and alexithymia in adults with somatoform disorders

Cited by 76 publications

References 60 publications

Alexithymia and the Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions (EFEs): Systematic Review, Unanswered Questions and Further Perspectives

Alexithymia and the Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions (EFEs): Systematic Review, Unanswered Questions and Further Perspectives

Mixed emotions: the contribution of alexithymia to the emotional symptoms of autism

Recognition of Emotional Facial Expressions in Alexithymia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About