Cognitive and social correlates of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale

The authors examine the relationship of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) to sociodemographic characteristics, medical history, symptomatology, and illness cognition in a sample of 244 family medicine patients. The TAS had moderate internal reliability. In multiple regression analysis, the TAS was related to age, education, depressive symptoms, emotion suppression, self-consciousness, illness worry, and tendency to attribute somatic symptoms to psychological causes. Factor analysis of the TAS yielded four factors: Factor 1 (difficulty identifying feelings and bodily sensations) was related to education, social desirability, depressive symptoms, and private body-consciousness. Factor 2 (externally oriented thinking) was related to emotion suppression and self-consciousness. Factor 3 (difficulty expressing feelings to others) was related to age, social desirability, severity of past medical illness, depressive and somatic symptoms, and emotion suppression. Factor 4 (reduced daydreaming) was related to age and self-consciousness. The TAS measures conceptually distinct dimensions that are best studied as separate factors in psychosomatic models.