title: Validity issues in the assessment of alexithymia related to the developmental stages of emotional cognition and language.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  We examined developmental aspects of the emotional awareness of adolescents by evaluating their responses to a self-reported questionnaire based on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20).
  
  
  METHODS
  The items of the TAS-20 were modified to make them more understandable by adolescents, and nine new items related to a limited capacity for imagination were added. The Japanese Linguistic Ability Test and the multi-dimensional empathy scale for adolescents were administered to examine concurrent validity. Two hundred and two normative young adolescents and thirty-two adolescent patients with psychosomatic and/or behavioral problems participated in the study. Eighty junior high school students also participated in a separate examination of test-retest reliability.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Thirteen items were extracted after exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and four core factors were identified in the resulting scale: Difficulty Identifying Feelings (DIF), Difficulty Describing Feelings (DDF), Externally-Oriented Thinking (EOT) and Constricted Imaginal Capacities (CIC). Interestingly, scores on the multi-dimensional empathy scale correlated positively with DIF and DDF, but negatively with EOT and CIC. Higher DDF scores were associated with higher Japanese linguistic abilities. DIF/DDF scores were higher for females than males, irrespective of linguistic ability. Test-retest reliability coefficients were significant. The patient group showed significantly higher DIF scores than the normative students.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The present findings indicated that subjective difficulties in identifying and describing feelings are associated with empathetic and linguistic abilities. The developmental aspect to emotional awareness herein described suggests that self-reported questionnaires for alexithymia must be carefully constructed and examined, even for adults.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychosomatic Research, National Institute of Mental Health, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Hiroki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nishimura
authors.forename: Gen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Komaki
authors.forename: Tetsuya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Igarashi
authors.forename: Yoshiya
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Moriguchi
authors.forename: Sohei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kajiwara
authors.forename: Toru
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Akasaka