Alexithymia Is Related to the Need for More Emotional Intensity to Identify Static Fearful Facial Expressions

Starita, Francesca; Borhani, Khatereh; Bertini, Caterina; Scarpazza, Cristina

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00929

Cited by 26 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Furthermore, the evidence of the impairment in the high-conflict condition highlights the subclinical nature of alexithymia, suggesting that difficulties in emotion processing may become evident only under high task demands and may not necessarily be evident in everyday life. This is in line, for example, with the findings on the difficulties of alexithymic individuals in the identification of emotional facial expressions, which are evident when stimuli are presented under temporal constraints (e.g., 66 or 100 ms) but not when stimulus exposure time is prolonged (e.g., 1 or 3 s) (Pandey and Mandal, 1997; Grynberg et al, 2012; Ihme et al, 2014a,b; Starita et al, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Individuals with alexithymia represent about 10% of the general population (Taylor et al, 1991) and show multifaceted impairments in processing emotional stimuli. For example, they have impairments in the identification of emotional stimuli (Grynberg et al, 2012; Ihme et al, 2014a,b; Starita et al, 2018), the physiological response to those stimuli (Franz et al, 2003; Neumann et al, 2004; Pollatos et al, 2008; Bermond et al, 2010), the regulation of such response (Swart et al, 2009; Pollatos and Gramann, 2012) and its use to effectively guide decision making (Ferguson et al, 2009; Patil and Silani, 2014a,b; Scarpazza et al, 2017). Crucially, despite this evidence, the mechanisms that may account for such difficulties remain poorly understood.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Alexithymia and the Reduced Ability to Represent the Value of Aversively Motivated Actions

Starita

Pellegrino

2018

Front. Psychol.

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Alexithymia is a subclinical trait defined by difficulties in identifying and describing feelings and a cognitive style avoidant of introspection. Extensive literature shows that alexithymia is characterized by multifaceted impairments in processing emotional stimuli. Nevertheless, the mechanisms that may account for such impairments remain elusive. Here, we hypothesize that alexithymia may be understood as impairment in learning the emotional value of one’s own actions and test this comparing performance of participants with high (HA) and low (LA) levels of alexithymia on a probabilistic selection task. Results show that, compared to LA, HA need more time to learn the value of individual stimuli and associated actions as difference in reinforcement rate between stimuli decreases. In addition, HA appear less able to generalize the value of previously learned actions that lead to a negative outcome, to make adaptive choices in a new context, requiring more time to avoid the most negative stimulus between two negative stimuli. Together, the results indicate that individuals with alexithymia show impaired learning of the value of aversively motivated actions. We argue that this impairment may hinder the construction of internal representations of emotional stimuli and actions and represent a mechanism that may account for the difficulties of alexithymia in processing emotional stimuli.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alexithymia and the Reduced Ability to Represent the Value of Aversively Motivated Actions

Starita

Pellegrino

2018

Front. Psychol.

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“…In everyday life, this result translates to the fact that although an explicitly perceived logo can persuade to buy a specific product (e.g., viewing the McDonald's logo along the street can lead to driving the car towards a McDonald fast-food restaurant), a much lower level of processing of the same information can still bias choice towards the purchase of similar products (e.g., the presence of McDonald's logo on the street, even if not consciously perceived, can lead to driving the car towards any fast-food restaurant). From a clinical perspective, cue-guided choices are related to several conditions, ranging from compulsive conducts, to neuropsychiatric disorders (like depression), and addiction (for its strong implications with relapse) 7,9,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43] . The prevalence of automatic responding is indeed generally associated with addictive, impulsive, and obsessive traits 3439, [44][45][46][47] .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subliminal determinants of cue-guided choice

Garofalo

Sagliano

Starita

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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By anticipating potential rewards, external cues can guide behavior to achieve a goal. Whether the conscious elaboration of these cues is necessary to elicit cue-guided choices is still unknown. the goal of the present study is to test whether the subliminal presentation of a visual cue previously paired with a reward is sufficient to bias responses that can lead to the same or a similar reward. To this aim, three experiments compared the subliminal and supraliminal presentation of reward-associated cues during a pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer task. in line with previous evidence, results showed that the supraliminal presentation of reward-associated pavlovian cues biased participant's choice towards motivationally similar rewards (general transfer) as well as towards rewards sharing the precise sensory-specific properties of the cue (outcome-specific transfer). In striking contrast, subliminal cues biased choice only towards motivationally similar rewards (general transfer). taken together, these findings suggest that cue-guided choices are modulated by the level of perceptual threshold (i.e., subliminal vs supraliminal) of reward-associated cues. Although conscious elaboration of the cue is necessary to guide choice towards a specific reward, subliminal processing is still sufficient to push towards choices sharing the motivational properties of the cue. implications for everyday life, clinical conditions, and theoretical accounts of cue-guided choices are discussed.

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“…Thus, it appears that externally oriented thinking is linked to impairments in rapid emotion processing. Individuals with heightened alexithymia might need more perceptual information to identify threat-related facial expressions [64].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alexithymia and automatic processing of facial emotions: behavioral and neural findings

et al. 2020

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Background: Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulties identifying and describing feelings, an externally oriented style of thinking, and a reduced inclination to imagination. Previous research has shown deficits in the recognition of emotional facial expressions in alexithymia and reductions of brain responsivity to emotional stimuli. Using an affective priming paradigm, we investigated automatic perception of facial emotions as a function of alexithymia at the behavioral and neural level. In addition to self-report scales, we applied an interview to assess alexithymic tendencies. Results: During 3 T fMRI scanning, 49 healthy individuals judged valence of neutral faces preceded by briefly shown happy, angry, fearful, and neutral facial expressions. Alexithymia was assessed using the 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ) and the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA). As expected, only negative correlations were found between alexithymic features and affective priming. The global level of self-reported alexithymia (as assessed by the TAS-20 and the BVAQ) was found to be related to less affective priming owing to angry faces. At the facet level, difficulties identifying feelings, difficulties analyzing feelings, and impoverished fantasy (as measured by the BVAQ) were correlated with reduced affective priming due to angry faces. Difficulties identifying feelings (BVAQ) correlated also with reduced affective priming due to fearful faces and reduced imagination (TSIA) was related to decreased affective priming due to happy faces. There was only one significant correlation between alexithymia dimensions and automatic brain response to masked facial emotions: TAS-20 alexithymia correlated with heightened brain response to masked happy faces in superior and medial frontal areas. Conclusions: Our behavioral results provide evidence that alexithymic features are related in particular to less sensitivity for covert facial expressions of anger. The perceptual alterations could reflect impaired automatic recognition or integration of social anger signals into judgemental processes and might contribute to the problems in interpersonal relationships associated with alexithymia. Our findings suggest that self-report measures of alexithymia may have an advantage over interview-based tests as research tools in the field of emotion perception at least in samples of healthy individuals characterized by rather low levels of alexithymia.

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Alexithymia Is Related to the Need for More Emotional Intensity to Identify Static Fearful Facial Expressions

Cited by 26 publications

References 59 publications

Alexithymia and the Reduced Ability to Represent the Value of Aversively Motivated Actions

Alexithymia and the Reduced Ability to Represent the Value of Aversively Motivated Actions

Subliminal determinants of cue-guided choice

Alexithymia and automatic processing of facial emotions: behavioral and neural findings

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