Alexithymia, empathy, and psychological symptoms in a family context

Alexithymia in the interpersonal domain: A general deficit of empathy?

“…The interpersonal reactivity index; IRI (Davis, 1983; French version: Guttman & Laporte, 2002) is a multidimensional questionnaire of empathy (Davis, 1983). Perspective taking (PT) evaluates attempts to take into consideration the point of view of others (e.g., ''When I am upset at someone, I usually try to put myself in his shoes for a while").…”

“…Since then, alexithymia has been associated with low scores on interpersonal factors of emotional competences questionnaires (e.g., Parker, Taylor, & Bagby, 2001). Guttman and Laporte (2002) examined associations between alexithymia and empathy by using respectively the TAS-20 and the IRI. They showed that (1) the IRI PD and PT scores were associated with DIF scores, (2) the IRI PD and EC scores were associated with DDF scores, (3) the IRI PT, F and EC scores were associated with EOT scores.…”

Expressive Incoherence and Alexithymia in Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Alexithymia impairs both the experience and the expression of emotion (Taylor et al 1997). It has an impact at both intrapersonal and interpersonal levels and has been linked to socio-affective deficits such as a lack of empathy (Guttman and Laporte 2002). The few studies that have examined alexithymia in children with ASD have found that, similarly to adults (Berthoz and Hill 2005), alexithymia is more prevalent among children with ASD than among TD children (Griffin et al 2015;Rieffe et al 2007).…”

Divergent roles of autistic and alexithymic traits in utilitarian moral judgments in adults with autism

“…Although the preponderance rate of clinical levels of alexithymia in healthy population is at 10%, it is unusually prevalent (40-65%) in adults and children with ASD [28][29][30][31][32] . Therefore, it is important to account for its effects in emotional processing deficits observed in ASD, especially because trait alexithymia itself has been associated with impaired emotional processing (e.g., empathy [33][34][35] , emotion regulation 36 , emotional interoception 37 , etc.). Thus, it is likely that, when observed, the emotional processing deficits in ASD are due to the presence of elevated levels of alexithymia.…”