Associations Between Autism Symptomatology, Alexithymia, Trait Emotional Intelligence, and Adjustment to College

Abstract

It has been asserted that the socio-emotional challenges associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be explained, in part, by the higher rates of alexithymia in individuals with autism. Alexithymia refers to difficulties in identifying one’s own emotional states and describing those states to others. Thus, one goal of the present study was to examine levels of alexithymia in relation to ASD symptomatology and trait emotion intelligence (EI). Trait EI is a multifaceted concept that captures emotional competencies and behavioral dispositions A second goal was to assess whether alexithymia, ASD symptomatology and trait EI served as significant predictors of adjustment to college, including academic, social, and personal-emotional adjustment. In addition to keeping with the spectrum nature of autism, our research strategy allowed us to capture those students who may not have received a formal diagnosis of ASD but report symptoms that can be indicative of ASD. This includes women, who are less likely to receive a diagnosis of ASD even when ASD symptomatology is present. The results of the study showed that students reporting higher levels of ASD symptomatology also reported significantly higher levels of alexithymia and lower trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) than those with less or no symptomatology. Alexithymia was also negatively related to trait EI, and both alexithymia and ASD symptomatology were found to be significant predictors of trait EI. However, only trait EI was a significant predictor of adjustment to college and only for social adjustment. These findings suggest that support programs that develop trait EI skills may improve the college experience for students with ASD, regardless of alexithymia or ASD symptomatology.

The “emotional brain” of adolescent Spanish–German heritage speakers: is emotional intelligence a proxy for productive emotional vocabulary?

“…The question that arises is whether having a richer and more diverse emotional vocabulary is a direct consequence of individual differences (such those in EI), beyond the impact of age, previous experiences and other contextual factors which have already been established in the literature. The available evidence suggests that trait EI influences domains in which the use of emotional words is key, such as emotional granularity (i.e., the ability to describe positive and negative states using a wide range of emotional words and concepts; see Lindquist & Barrett, 2008), emotional awareness (Agnoli et al, 2019) and alexithymia (Davidson & Morales, 2022;Taylor & Taylor-Allan, 2007). Barrett (2017) argued that high EI individuals are better equipped to use a wide variety of emotional concepts to describe their emotional states and experiences.…”