It has been hypothesized that alexithymia is related to an impairment of the right hemisphere or a deficiency in interhemispheric transfer. We used the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20) and the tactile finger localization task of Zeitlin et al. to test these relationships on nonclinical samples of college men and women, and also considered the role of short-term memory. Among 47 men, the TA...

This study compares the levels of anxiety, depression, alexithymia and stressful life events in 30 consecutive patients of psoriasis with equal number of age and sex matched normal controls, patients with fungal infections and patients with neurosis, Sinha's anxiety scale, Hamilton's depression rating scale, Toronto alexithymia scale and the presumptive stressful life events scale were used to ...

A high percentage of individuals affected by eating disorders (ED) achieve incomplete recovery following treatment. In an attempt to improve treatment outcome, it is crucial that predictors of outcome are identified, and personalized care approaches established in line with new treatment targets, thus facilitating patient access to evidence-based treatments. Among the psychological factors prop...

Psychological factors have been supposed as an important link in the chain of pathogenesis and the course of many diseases, especially stress-related ones. The field of psychosomatics is concerned with the study of the mind / body relations and, in this context, to the assessment of the influence of psychological factors on bodily changes and, consequently, with the development of illness. Alex...

The ability to represent mental states (‘Theory of Mind’; ToM) is crucial in understanding individual differences in social ability, and social impairments evident in conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test (RMET) is a popular measure of ToM ability, validated in part by the poor performance of those with ASD. However, the RMET requires recogni...

Adults with alexithymia retrospectively report emotional difficulties with caregivers during childhood. However, the association between attachment style and alexithymic traits may be evident at an earlier stage than adulthood, i.e. during adolescence. Sixty school-based healthy females aged 9–18 years (mean 14.08, SD 2.71 years) participated in an Attachment Style Interview (ASI) and completed...

As an at-risk personality trait, alexithymia includes difficulties attending to, distinguishing among, and verbalizing emotions. While these deficits are typically described as extending to both positive and negative emotions, some research suggests a valence-specific pattern such that alexithymic individuals are under-responsive to appetitive stimuli in particular. As this pattern suggests anh...

Changes in emotional and social behaviour are considered to be amongst the most common and debilitating consequences of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Little is known of the effects of TBI on alexithymia, which refers to impairment in aspects of understanding emotions. In the current study TBI patients (N=28) were compared with demographically matched healthy controls (N=31) on the Toronto Alexi...

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 u...