Facial emotion recognition and alexithymia in adults with somatoform disorders

Abstract

The primary aim of this study was to investigate facial emotion recognition (FER) in patients with somatoform disorders (SFD). Also of interest was the extent to which concurrent alexithymia contributed to any changes in emotion recognition accuracy. Twenty patients with SFD and 20 healthy, age, sex and education matched, controls were assessed with the Facially Expressed Emotion Labelling Test of FER and the 26-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Patients withSFD exhibited elevated alexithymia symptoms relative to healthy controls.Patients with SFD also recognized significantly fewer emotional expressions than did the healthy controls. However, the group difference in emotion recognition accuracy became nonsignificant once the influence of alexithymia was controlled for statistically. This suggests that the deficit in FER observed in the patients with SFD was most likely a consequence of concurrent alexithymia. It should be noted that neither depression nor anxiety was significantly related to emotion recognition accuracy, suggesting that these variables did not contribute the emotion recognition deficit. Impaired FER observed in the patients with SFD could plausibly have a negative influence on these individuals’ social functioning.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/da.20456
Divisions: College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Psychology
College of Health & Life Sciences > Clinical and Systems Neuroscience
College of Health & Life Sciences
Aston University (General)
Additional Information: This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Pedrosa Gil, F, Ridout, N, Kessler, H, Neuffer, M, Schoechlin, C, Traue, HC & Nickel, M 2009, 'Facial emotion recognition and alexithymia in adults with somatoform disorders', Depression and anxiety, vol 26, no. 1, pp. E26-E33, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/da.20456/abstract.
Uncontrolled Keywords: alexithymia,emotion recognition,somatoform disorders,Psychiatry and Mental health,Clinical Psychology
Publication ISSN: 1520-6394
Last Modified: 27 Nov 2024 08:04
Date Deposited: 20 Jun 2012 12:59
Full Text Link: http://onlineli ... .20456/abstract
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2009-01
Authors: Pedrosa Gil, Francisco
Ridout, Nathan (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-7111-2996)
Kessler, Henrik
Neuffer, Michaela
Schoechlin, Claudia
Traue, Harald C.
Nickel, Marius

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