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The development and regulation of affects
... In the general population, 8-13% of persons show alexithymic traits (4)(5)(6). Moreover, these traits are more prevalent across a wide range of somatic and psychiatric disorders (7)(8)(9)(10) and are particularly high (26-50%) among patients with depressive disorders (9,11). Depressed patients with alexithymia show more severe depressive symptoms and more overall psychopathology compared to depressed non-alexithymic patients (12). ...
Alexithymia—reflecting deficits in cognitive emotion processing—is highly prevalent in individuals with depressive disorders. Subsequently, mixed evidence for attentional bias is found in these individuals. Alexithymia may be a potential influencing factor for attentional bias in depression. In the current study, 83 currently depressed (CD) and 76 never-depressed (ND) controls completed an eye-tracker task consisting of valenced (non)-social pictures. Alexithymia scores were also included as a moderator as both a continuous and categorical measure (so high vs. low alexithymia). No group difference or moderating effect of alexithymia was found on attentional bias. Thus, alexithymic symptoms, included both dimensionally and categorically, may not influence biased attentional processing in depression compared to ND individuals. Thus, it is important to explore other potential explaining factors for the equivocal results found on biased attentional processing of emotional information in depression.
... This lack of understanding may lead low emotion differentiators to misinterpret and ruminate about negative arousal states. Moreover, low differentiators may become susceptible to binge eating, substance abuse, and other self-destructive strategies to down-regulate negative emotions Taylor, Bagby, & Parker, 1997). Parker, Taylor, and Bagby (1998) suggest that people with little ability to distinguish their emotions have less capacity for emotion regulation. ...
Anger is commonly associated with aggression. Inefficient anger-coping strategies increase negative affect and deplete the regulatory resources needed to control aggressive impulses. Factors linked with better emotion regulation may then weaken the relationship between anger and aggression. The current work explored one factor associated with emotion regulation-differentiating one's emotions into discrete categories-that may buffer angry people from aggression. Three diary studies (N = 628) tested the hypothesis that emotion differentiation would weaken the relationship between anger and aggression. In Study 1, participants high in emotion differentiation reported less daily aggressive tendencies when angry, compared to low differentiators. In Study 2, compared to low differentiators, high differentiators reported less frequent provocation in daily life and less daily aggression in response to being provoked and feeling intense anger. Study 3 showed that high daily emotional control mediated the interactive effect of emotion differentiation and anger on aggression. These results highlight the importance of considering how angry people differentiate their emotions in predicting their aggressive responses to anger.
In the past decade, there has been an increased focus on the role of physiology in interpersonal interactions, resulting in a surge of research exploring topics related to communication in close relationships. This growing line of research has explored topics such as affectionate communication, forgiveness, communication apprehension, and social support. Contributing to the increase in physiological research on communication processes is a greater recognition of the bidirectional nature of the associations among communication and the body. Researchers studied both the physiological outcomes of communication episodes (e.g., stress responses to conflict conversations) and the effects of physiology on the communication process (e.g., the influence of hormones on postsex communication). The Oxford Handbook of the Physiology of Interpersonal Communication offers a comprehensive review of the most prolific areas of research investigating both the physiological outcomes of interpersonal communication and the effects of physiology on interpersonal interactions. This edited volume serves as a resource for both researchers and students interested in investigating the mutual influence of physiology and communication in close relationships.
A psychological assessment using biofeedback was performed for an adjustment disorder inpatient who showed less verbal and non‐verbal expressions, and experienced difficulty in receiving favorable results from treatment. The assessment revealed hidden problems behind the symptoms. She was subsequently discharged, after which no clinical intervention was required, including medication. A psychological assessment using biofeedback was performed for an adjustment disorder inpatient who showed less verbal and non‐verbal expressions, and experienced difficulty in receiving favorable results from treatment. The assessment revealed hidden problems behind the symptoms. She was subsequently discharged, after which no clinical intervention was required, including medication.
Objective:
Improving treatment outcomes for posttraumatic stress necessitates consideration of factors that may impede treatment progress. Previous research suggests alexithymia-an emotion-processing deficit characterized by difficulties in identifying, describing, and attending to emotional information-may be a therapeutically relevant correlate of posttraumatic stress.
Method:
Building upon previous work in this area, meta-analysis was used to investigate (a) how alexithymic traits typically present among those with a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis, (b) the strength of association between alexithymic trait severity and posttraumatic stress severity independent of diagnosis, and (c) alexithymia subdimensions most closely associated with posttraumatic stress. A total of 43 samples encompassing 5,069 participants were included in analyses.
Results:
Results suggest individuals diagnosed with PTSD tend to experience alexithymic traits that, while just below the clinical cutoff, are 1.32 standard deviations more severe than the general population. These alexithymic traits are particularly prominent in male and veteran samples and for difficulties in identifying feelings. Independent of diagnosis, posttraumatic stress was moderately associated with alexithymic traits, and stronger associations were noted between posttraumatic stress and difficulties in identifying feelings than between posttraumatic stress and difficulties in describing feelings or externally oriented thinking.
Conclusions:
Results attest to the importance of considering, conceptualizing, and treating posttraumatic stress and alexithymia in tandem. Implications for ongoing treatment development for posttraumatic stress are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Purpose
– Foetal programming is one of the key mechanisms by which physical and social adversity is biologically embedded during pregnancy. While early interest in such programming focused on the long-term impact of the mother's nutritional state on the child's later physical health, more recent research has identified an increased risk of psychopathology in children of women who have experienced stress, anxiety and depression during pregnancy. The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature addressing the impact of stress in pregnancy and the implications for practice.
Design/methodology/approach
– An overview of the literature has been provided.
Findings
– Both anxiety and depression in pregnancy are common, with a prevalence in the region of 20 per cent. Exposure in pregnancy to anxiety, depression and stress from a range of sources (e.g. bereavement, relationship problems, external disasters and war), is associated with a range of physical (e.g. congenital malformations, reduced birthweight and gestational age), neurodevelopmental, cognitive, and emotional and behavioural (e.g. ADHD, conduct disorder) problems. The magnitude is significant, with the attributable risk of childhood behaviour problems due to prenatal stress being between 10 and 15 per cent, and the variance in cognitive development due to prenatal stress being around 17 per cent. A range of methods of intervening are effective in improving both maternal anxiety and depression, and in the longer term should improve outcomes for the infant and child.
Research limitations/implications
– This research highlights the importance of intervening to support the psychological wellbeing of pregnant women to improve outcomes for infants and children, and points to the need for further research into innovative ways of working, particularly with high-risk groups of pregnant women.
Originality/value
– The paper provides an update of earlier overviews.
The purpose of this paper is to review the current literature regarding the development of alexithymic personality features. Modern brain imaging technologies provide interesting data on the associations of alexithymia with different aberrations in brain function related to emotion regulation; however, the development of these deviations is poorly understood. A notable amount of research covers the relation of alexithymia to different environmental factors. Many of these associations, for example, with low socio-economic status and general psychopathology in childhood, are well established. However, the retrospective and cross-sectional designs commonly used in these studies, as well as the use of self-report measures, hinder the ability to firmly establish causality. Certain individual developmental factors, such as lagging speech development and congenital cardiac malformations in childhood, have been associated with the development of alexithymia. Regarding the stability of alexithymia, a systematic review of the literature was conducted for this paper. In addition to being characterized as a personality feature in the general population, alexithymia also clearly has a state-like dimension that results in increases and decreases in alexithymic features in conjunction with mental disorder symptoms. An essential question is whether the alexithymic features in adulthood are, in fact, infantile features of a restricted ability to identify and describe emotions that simply persist in individuals through adolescence to adulthood. To firmly establish the roots of alexithymia development, longitudinal studies, particularly in younger populations, are needed. Furthermore, multifaceted study settings are encouraged.
The aim of the current study was to test whether women's emotional regulation (ER) capacity moderates the relationship between childhood abuse and both adult intimate partner violence (IPV) and relationship quality. Female graduate students (N = 425), either married or in a long-term cohabitation, participated in an Internet-based survey. Structural equation model (SEM) multiple-group analysis was conducted to estimate whether the link between childhood abuse and marital outcomes varied across high and low levels of ER. The data showed that childhood abuse was associated with higher levels of IPV and lower marital quality. A high level of ER was found to buffer the association between child abuse and IPV. Among women with a low level of ER, childhood abuse had a stronger negative effect on relationship quality than for women with a high level of ER. ER is a protective factor against revictimization in intimate relationships.
The cross-cultural relevance of alexithymia, a psychological construct related to emotional expressiveness, is explored through construct validation using the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and two theoretically related concepts – patient self-disclosure (SD) and private selfconsciousness (PSC) – among English-speaking Americans (N= 333) and Spanish-speaking Peruvians (N= 228). In the American sample, the TAS-20 showed psychometric properties similar to those reported elsewhere with North American and European samples. However, with the Peruvian sample, the Spanish version of the TAS-20 had low internal consistency, low mean inter-item correlations and the original three-factor structure could not be duplicated. Semi-structured interviews with Peruvian informants (n= 10) point to difficulties responding to negatively keyed items and low reliance on introspection when describing affective states. In light of these findings, issues related to translation adequacy, measurement error and cross-cultural equivalence in construct operationalization are discussed.
Alexithymia is a personality disposition, found in patients with different diseases, characterized by difficulty in identifying emotions or differentiating between sensations and emotions and a concrete thinking style. This review focuses on the relation of alexithymia and chronic pain. The first section deals with studies (n = 20) comparing the alexithymia scores of chronic pain patients with norms or control groups (the 'between group design'). Despite the variety of samples and assessment tools, the great majority of studies showed that chronic pain patients are more alexithymic than healthy controls as well as other types of medical or psychiatric patients. The second section deals with the correlates of alexithymia in chronic pain patients (the 'within group design'). The findings show that alexithymia is mostly unrelated to demographic or clinical features of pain as well as to psychopathology, but is related to diffuse pain descriptions, somatic complaints, inhibited anger, anxiety, passivity, limited social relations, hysteria, hypochondriasis and upholding a positive facade. Major implications are that alexithymia is a primary phenomenon and not merely a reaction to pain, that pain patients dispose of poor means for controlling pain, and that psychopharmacological and behavioral interventions are more likely than psychotherapeutic methods to be helpful to these patients.
This paper presents affect as an essential aspect of students' self-reflection and self-regulation. The introduced concepts of self-system and self-system process stress the importance of self-appraisals of personal competence and agency in affective responses and self-regulation in problem solving. Students are viewed as agents who constantly interpret and evaluate their experiences and regulate their behaviour, in interaction with their mathematics learning environment. This perspective is used to interpret two data sets: Finnish secondary school students' questionnaire responses and their mathematics achievement, and Frank's problem solving episode. The former study examines statistical relations between self-confidence, positive and negative affective responses, self-regulatory patterns, and math performance. The latter focuses on Frank's appraisals and self-regulatory processes with his affective responses while problem solving. Finally, I consider the perspective's usefulness and compare it others in this Special Issue.
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