How Closely Related Are Parent and Child Reports of Child Alexithymia?

Abstract

Alexithymia is a subclinical trait involving difficulty describing and identifying emotions. It is common in a number of psychiatric conditions. Alexithymia in children is sometimes measured by parent report and sometimes by child self-report, but it is not yet known how closely related the two measures are. This is an important question both theoretically and practically, in terms of research design and clinical practice. We conducted a preliminary study to investigate this question in a sample of 6- to 11-year-old neurotypical children and their parents (N = 29 dyads). Parent and child reports were not correlated, and 93% of parents under-estimated their child’s level of alexithymia relative to the child’s self-report. Based on these results, we hypothesize that when asked to report on the child’s alexithymia, children and parents may not be reporting on the same phenomenon, and thus these two measures may not be interchangeable. These provocative findings, however, must be considered preliminary: our analyses were sufficiently powered to detect a strong relation between the two types of report had one existed, but our analyses were not sufficiently powered to distinguish between a small relation and no relation at all.

No association between alexithymia and emotion recognition or theory of mind in a sample of adolescents enhanced for autistic traits

“…Therefore, we chose to use a parentreport measure in the current study because we felt that self-report may not be suitable for the younger participants in our sample of 10-16 year olds, and especially those who were also autistic or had high levels of autistic traits, who may have additional difficulties identifying and communicating their internal states. Given that correlations between self and parent-report measures of alexithymia in neurotypical and autistic youth (Griffin et al, 2016;Lampi et al, 2021;Speyer et al, 2022) and children with developmental language disorder (Hobson & van den Bedem, 2021) are generally not significant (although see Brown et al, 2022, for an exception with a recently developed measure), parent versus self-report measures may be measuring different things, and this could in part explain why our results differ from those reported from adult studies that used self-report. Indeed, a recent review highlighted that the type of measurement used (e.g.…”

“…Although some associations between observer-rated autism behaviours (as measured by the ADOS [Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule]) are only seen for parent, not self-report, measures of alexithymia (Hobson et al, 2020), this does not discount the potential for measurement error in parent-rated instruments. For example, parents may struggle to report on more internally located aspects of alexithymia, such as how children experience their emotions, leading to underestimation of alexithymia (as suggested by Lampi et al, 2021). However, parentrated scores on the CAM measure (used in the current study) are associated with predicted manifestations of alexithymia (e.g.…”

Epigenetic modification of the oxytocin receptor gene is associated with child-parent neural synchrony during competition

“…We sought to further interrogate the mechanism for the relationships between long-term socioemotional capacities correlated with methylation of OXTR and acute social dynamics reflected by INS and behavioral attunement scores. We evaluated the relationship between these variables and children’s self-reported alexithymia (i.e., difficulty with emotional reflection and communication measured via TAS-C score; Lampi et al, 2021 ). TAS-C scores directly reflected the child’s perceptions of their own socioemotional capacity and allowed us to evaluate its independent relationships with dyadic relational dynamics (i.e., behavioral attunement and INS measures), and with biological measures which indirectly reflect socioemotional capacity (i.e., child OXTR m).…”

“…Children first completed an adapted version of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-C; Table A.1 ; Rieffe et al, 2006 ), which assesses a child’s perception of their aptitude for emotional communication. This was verbally administered by an experimenter following procedures in Lampi et al (2021) while parents were in a separate waiting room. Children and parents were then fitted with 20-channel mobile EEG headsets and completed various tasks designed to elicit social interaction.…”