Alexithymia, Not Autism Spectrum Disorder, Predicts Perceived Attachment to Parents in School-Age Children

Abstract

Alexithymia is defined as a limited ability in the cognitive processing of emotions. Literature suggested its negative influence on interpersonal relationship, documenting elevated alexithymia in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) compared to control groups. However, the study of alexithymia in school-age children with ASD remains largely unexplored as well as its effect on specific child socioemotional outcomes such as quality of attachment relationships. This study examines alexithymia and perceived attachment to parents in twenty-four children with ASD (without intellectual disability) and 24 typically developing (TD) children (mean age 10 years) using the self-reported Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children (AQC) and the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA). Measures of family SES as well as child intelligence were collected. Data revealed that ASD children showed higher levels of Alexithymia compared to TD group. In addition, 21% of participants with ASD exceed alexithymia categorical cut-off. By contrast, no difference emerged in the perception of attachment to parents. Moreover, alexithymia, but not ASD status, was found to predictive of child perception of attachment to parents. We observed no significant effect of child age and verbal IQ. Our findings showed that alexithymia was more common in children with ASD, whereas attachment was similar between groups. Difficulties in identifying and describing one's own feelings may hinder the construction of a positive representation of parent-child attachment relationship regardless of child clinical status. Thus, alexithymia seems to play a key role on the way school-age children with and without ASD perceive their relationship with their parents.

Is visual gaze in children with autism spectrum disorder related to sequence of emotion intensity presentation? An eye‐tracking study of natural emotion perception processes

“…The most substantial perceptual impairment in children with ASD and the strongest correlation with the Personal‐Social subscale in the strong‐to‐weak stimulus presentation mode suggests that the degree of emotion perceptual impairment in children with ASD is related to the Personal‐Social subscale (Chambon et al, 2017). However, previous studies failed to indicate a correlation between emotional perception with GQ in children with ASD (Giannotti et al, 2020). The inconsistent relationship between visual fixation and GQ across stimulus presentation modes suggests that researchers need to be aware of the importance of stimulus presentation modes on emotional perception in children with ASD.…”