Related Experiment Videos
Processing of facial expressions of emotion and alexithymia
1Department of Psychology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India.
Objective:
The primary objective was to examine emotional responsiveness in alexithymia.
Design:
A quasi-experimental design was followed with the alexithymia variable being manipulated by subject stratification based on Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20-H.
Method:
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.
Results:
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.
Conclusion:
Such difficulty in alexithymics may be associated with their inability to use emotional words in the appropriate context.