Impaired categorical perception of emotional facial expressions in alexithymia

Abstract

Alexithymia is characterized by low awareness of one’s own emotions and by an externally-oriented thinking. It has been linked to social impairments, notably with lower abilities to decode emotional facial expressions (EFE). However, it remained unclear whether alexithymia is associated with a deficit for subtle (i.e., expressed at low intensities) emotions. Forty participants completed the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale and an emotional morphing paradigm which displayed morphed emotions along continua between neutral and full-blown emotions (anger, fear, sadness, disgust, and happiness). Main results showed that high levels of alexithymia, and more particularly externally-oriented thinking, were associated with increased identification threshold for fearful expressions and impaired recognition of low-intensity fearful faces. This study thus supports that alexithymia is characterized by an underestimation of fearful expressions and by altered identification of subtle EFE, which are the most frequently experiences in real-life situations.