Pervasive Emotion Recognition Deficit Common to Alexithymia and the Repressive Coping Style

Abstract

The results indicate that alexithymia and the repressive coping style are each associated with impairments in the recognition of both pleasant and unpleasant emotions and that the two styles of emotional self-regulation differ more in the magnitude than in the quality of these impairments.

Recognition of Emotional Facial Expressions in Alexithymia

“…Our results are consistent with previous studies in which authors have presented images of facial expressions taken from FACS (Allerdings, 1997;Lane et al, 1996Lane et al, , 2000McDonald & Prkachin, 1990;Mann et al, 1994;Pandey & Mandal, 1997;Parker et al, 2005;Prkachin et al, 2009;Reker et al, 2010), as well as those who have had facial micro-expressions (Swart, Kortekeer, & German, 2009), and degraded presentations of facial expressions that hinder its recognition (Kätsyri et al, 2008). On the other hand, studies using the affective priming task (Suslow, 1998;Suslow & Junghanns, 2001;Suslow et al, 2001) have showed inconsistent results.…”

“…In this line, previous studies have shown a significant correlation between alexithymia and a lack of ability to recognize emotions in photographs of facial expressions (Allerdings, 1997;Lane et al, 1996Lane et al, , 2000Mann, Wise, Trinidad, & Kohanski, 1994;McDonald & Prkachin, 1990;Pandey & Mandal, 1997;Parker et al, 1993;Parker, Prkachin, & Prkachin, 2005;Prkachin, Casey, & Prkachin, 2009). 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).…”

“…Several studies demonstrated that alexithymic individuals are impaired in their ability to recognize emotion when both the stimulus and the response are non-verbal, suggesting that alexithymia, "the lack of words for emotion", is not just a verbal phenomenon. Several authors hypothesized that hampered regulation of emotion in alexithymia might be based on deficits in the perception and further processing of emotional stimuli (Aleman, 2005;Martínez-Sánchez, Montero, & de la Cerra, 2002;Lane, Sechrest, Reidel, Shapiro, & Kaszniak, 2000). This statement has been empirically supported by imaging data (Kano et al, 2003;Mantani, Okamoto, Shirao, Okada, & Yamawaki, 2005;Moriguchi et al, 2006) and event-related potentials (Pollatos & Gramann, 2011).…”

The Role of Alexithymia in Reduced Eye-Fixation in Autism Spectrum Conditions

“…Thus, impaired representation of the emotional state of the self in alexithymia would lead to impaired representation of the other's emotion, which may be manifested as impaired recognition of emotion. Several studies support this conjecture, reporting impaired recognition of facial emotion in alexithymia (Mann et al 1994;Parker et al 1993;Jessimer and Markham 1997;Lane et al 1996Lane et al , 2000Prkachin et al 2009). The reliance of accurate emotion recognition on typical visual scan paths to emotional face stimuli (Aviezer et al 2008;Calder et al 2000;Smith et al 2005;Wong et al 2005), makes it possible that the impaired emotion recognition in individuals with alexithymia is due to atypical attention to the eye and mouth regions of emotional face stimuli.…”

Alexitimia: uma revisão do conceito

“…Porém, a falta de uma teoria consistente que desse suporte ao construto teórico foi um dos determinantes para as inconsistências e a falta de consenso encontradas na literatura (Larsen, Brand, Bermond & Hijman, 2003;Taylor, 2000). Estudos empíricos, com amostras pequenas, delineamentos inadequados de pesquisa, utilização de instrumentos fracos metodologicamente (Lane, Sechrest, Riedel, Shapiro & Kaszniak, 2000;Larsen & cols., 2003;Morrison & Pihl 1989;Taylor, 2000;Taylor, Ryan & Bagby, 1985;Taylor & Bagby, 2004), imprecisão na definição e operacionalização do construto (Bermond, 2003;Larsen & cols., 2003), entre outros, parecem ser também outras razões para a falta de consenso. Como uma das implicações dessas diferenças epistemológicas para a prática clínica, destaca-se aqui a forma de tratar os chamados pacientes psicossomáticos.…”