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Recognizing and Looking at Masked Emotional Faces in Alexithymia
Marla Fuchs1, Anette Kersting1, Thomas Suslow1
1Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University of Leipzig Medical Center, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
Behavioral Sciences (Basel, Switzerland)
|April 26, 2024
Summary
High alexithymia did not impair emotion recognition from masked faces. However, men with alexithymia showed reduced attention to eyes, focusing more on masks, unlike women.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Human Behavior
Background:
- Alexithymia involves difficulty identifying/communicating emotions and externally oriented thinking.
- Previous research links alexithymia to poor emotion decoding and reduced eye attention.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate if high alexithymia impairs emotion recognition in masked faces.
- Examine if high alexithymia correlates with reduced attentional preference for eyes.
Main Methods:
- An eye-tracking study using masked facial expressions (happy, fearful, disgusted, neutral).
- High-alexithymic and non-alexithymic individuals performed an emotion recognition task.
- Analyzed accuracy, response speed, and fixation duration on eyes and masks, considering sex.
Main Results:
- Alexithymia did not affect emotion recognition accuracy or speed.
- Alexithymic men, unlike non-alexithymic men, showed less attention to eyes, with increased focus on masks.
- No significant differences in eye fixation duration were found between alexithymic and non-alexithymic women.
Conclusions:
- High alexithymia may not hinder emotion recognition from masked faces.
- Sex is a crucial moderating variable in gaze behavior during facial emotion recognition in alexithymia.
- Future studies should explore sex differences in alexithymia's impact on visual attention to facial cues.
Keywords:
alexithymiaemotion faceemotion recognitioneye-trackingface masksgaze behaviorsexvisual attentionMore Related Videos
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