Processing of facial expressions of emotion and alexithymia.
The primary objective was to examine emotional responsiveness in alexithymia.



A quasi-experimental design was followed with the alexithymia variable being manipulated by subject stratification based on Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20-H.



Alexithymics (N = 12) and non-alexithymics (N = 12) were asked to match, label and verbally describe photographs displaying facial emotions along with TAT card II.



Alexithymics did not differ from non-alexithymics in emotional matching and labelling tasks but had significant difficulty in verbally describing emotional expressions as evident by less duration of utterance, greater response latency and increased linguistic-type speech disruptions. Speech disruptions did not produce a group difference for TAT card II.



Such difficulty in alexithymics may be associated with their inability to use emotional words in the appropriate context.
Pandey
R
R
Department of Psychology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India.
Mandal
M K
MK
D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000175:diagnosis*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011581:Psychological Tests; D011594:Psychometrics; D012938:Social Perception; D014705:Verbal Behavior