Processing of facial expressions of emotion and alexithymia

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.