Impact of childhood trauma, alexithymia, dissociation, and emotion suppression on emotional Stroop task

Wingenfeld, Katja; Riedesel, Kirsten; Petrović, Zorica D.; Philippsen, Christine; Meyer, Björn; Rose, Matthias; Grabe, Hans J.; Barnow, Sven; Löwe, Bernd; Spitzer, Carsten

doi:10.1016/j.jpsychores.2010.06.003

Cited by 32 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…This indicates that the more childhood trauma prisoners experienced, the more severe their symptom of alexithymia. This result is consistent with a growing literature showing that childhood trauma is a well-described risk factor for the development of several psychiatric disorders, including alexithymia [ 5 , 56 , 84 – 86 ]. Based on the results of recent research on the effects of maltreatment on brain development, repeated trauma in childhood may stunt growth of part of the brain involved in emotions, such as hippocampus.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Prevalence and associated factors of alexithymia among adult prisoners in China: a cross-sectional study

Chen

You

et al. 2017

BMC Psychiatry

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Background: Prison is an extremely stressful environment and prisoners have an increasing risk of suffering from alexithymia. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the prevalence and associated factors of alexithymia among prisoners in China. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in five main jails of the district of Zhejiang province in China, and a total of 1705 adult prisoners ultimately took part in the study. Toronto Alexithymia Scale, Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Beck Hopelessness Scale and several short demographic questions were applied. Results: Over 30% of prisoners were classified as alexithymics and as high as 96.2% of prisoners suffered from at least one traumatic experience in their childhood, meanwhile, 81.5%, 53.4% and 85.8% were found to be positive for depression, anxiety and hopelessness symptoms respectively. Education, childhood trauma, negative emotional symptoms including depression, anxiety and hopelessness of the respondents, were negatively or positively associated with alexithymia among prisoners. Conclusions:The results indicated that high prevalence of alexithymia among prisoners is linked with their level of education, experience of childhood trauma and symptoms of negative emotions. Accordingly, the findings in our study can be used for prevention and intervention of alexithymia among prisoners.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Prevalence and associated factors of alexithymia among adult prisoners in China: a cross-sectional study

Chen

You

et al. 2017

BMC Psychiatry

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“…Trauma fits within this model, as those exposed to TLEs often disproportionately allocate attention to threatening stimuli, which consequently could lead to incorrect inferences in line with paranoid ideation (Sherrer, 2011). These biases in information processing, measured behaviorally (e.g., Emotional Stroop task) or neurophysiologically (e.g., EEG), have been found in traumatized (Caparos & Blanchette, 2014; Wingenfeld et al, 2011), psychotic disordered (Bendall et al, 2013b; Besnier et al, 2010; Kinderman, Prince, Waller, & Peters, 2003; Wiffen et al, 2013), CHR (Rosier et al, 2013; Nieman et al, 2014), and subclinical psychosis samples (Fisher et al, 2014b; Marks, Steel, & Peters, 2012). These populations have been found to have longer reaction times for threatening words, suggesting a general attention bias towards threatening stimuli (Bendall et al, 2013b; Cisler et al, 2011; Wiffen et al, 2013).…”

Section: Proposed Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Trauma and the psychosis spectrum: A review of symptom specificity and explanatory mechanisms

Gibson

Alloy

Ellman

2016

Clinical Psychology Review

160

136

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Traumatic life events have been robustly associated with various psychosis outcomes, including increased risk of psychotic disorders, the prodrome of psychosis, and dimensional measures of psychotic symptoms, such as attenuated positive psychotic symptoms. However, trauma exposure has been linked to various mental disorders; therefore, the specificity of trauma exposure to psychosis remains unclear. This review focuses on two understudied areas of the trauma and psychosis literature: 1) the specificity between trauma and psychosis in relation to other disorders that often result post-trauma, and 2) proposed mechanisms that uniquely link trauma to psychosis. We begin by discussing the underlying connection between trauma exposure and the entire psychosis spectrum with a focus on the influence of trauma type and specific psychotic symptoms. We then consider how the principles of multifinality and equifinality can be useful in elucidating the trauma-psychosis relationship versus the trauma-other disorder relationship. Next, we discuss several cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms that might uniquely account for the association between trauma and psychosis, as well as the role of gender. Lastly, we review important methodological issues that complicate the research on trauma and psychosis, ending with clinical implications for the field.

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“…Alexithymia, defined as the difficulty identifying, decoding, and communicating one's own emotional state (Franz et al, ), has been described as one potential outcome of ELS on the behavioral level (Freyberger, ; Frewen et al, ; Lumley et al, ). Its association with ELS has been demonstrated in a number of clinical studies (e.g., Weber et al, ; Wingenfeld et al, ) and also in a very recent investigation of healthy individuals (Aust et al, ). On the neural level, alexithymia has been linked to reduced limbic responses to emotional stimuli (e.g., in the amygdala, Kugel et al, ; for a recent review, see Moriguchi and Komaki, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Differential effects of early life stress on hippocampus and amygdala volume as a function of emotional abilities

et al. 2014

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Early life stress (ELS) is known to have considerable influence on brain development and affective functioning. Previous studies in clinical populations have shown that hippocampus and amygdala, two central structures of limbic emotion processing circuits, are predominantly affected by early stress exposure. Given the inconsistent findings on ELS-related effects in healthy populations and the associations of ELS and affective functioning, the question arises which additional emotion-relevant variables need to be considered to better understand the effects of ELS. We, therefore, investigated the volume of hippocampus and amygdala in 25 high alexithymic (h-ALEX) and 25 low alexithymic (l-ALEX) individuals, which were matched with regard to ELS, but significantly differed in their degree of emotional functioning. Volumetric analyses were performed using FSL-FIRST, a method to automatically segment subcortical structures on T1-weighted magnetic resonance images. Alexithymia was assessed using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire. ELS was assessed by Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and Early Trauma Inventory. Our data showed that ELS was negatively associated with right hippocampus volume in h-ALEX individuals, while there was no such association in the l-ALEX group. Furthermore, ELS was positively associated with left amygdala volume in l-ALEX individuals, but not in individuals with high levels of alexithymia. The present study emphasizes a substantial relationship between intrapersonal factors, such as alexithymia and neural alterations related to the experience of ELS. Longitudinal study designs are necessary to pursue the question of how emotional abilities interact with individual adaptations to early stress exposure on the neural level.

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Impact of childhood trauma, alexithymia, dissociation, and emotion suppression on emotional Stroop task

Cited by 32 publications

References 36 publications

Prevalence and associated factors of alexithymia among adult prisoners in China: a cross-sectional study

Prevalence and associated factors of alexithymia among adult prisoners in China: a cross-sectional study

Trauma and the psychosis spectrum: A review of symptom specificity and explanatory mechanisms

Differential effects of early life stress on hippocampus and amygdala volume as a function of emotional abilities

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