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Clarifying the relationship between alexithymia and subjective interoception

The long-standing hypothesis that emotions rely on bodily states is back in the spotlight. This has led some researchers to suggest that alexithymia, a personality construct characterized by altered emotional awareness, reflects a general deficit in interoception. However, tests of this hypothesis h...

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Autores principales: Gaggero, Giulia, Bizzego, Andrea, Dellantonio, Sara, Pastore, Luigi, Lim, Mengyu, Esposito, Gianluca
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8668127/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34898643
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261126
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author Gaggero, Giulia
Bizzego, Andrea
Dellantonio, Sara
Pastore, Luigi
Lim, Mengyu
Esposito, Gianluca
author_facet Gaggero, Giulia
Bizzego, Andrea
Dellantonio, Sara
Pastore, Luigi
Lim, Mengyu
Esposito, Gianluca
author_sort Gaggero, Giulia
collection PubMed
description The long-standing hypothesis that emotions rely on bodily states is back in the spotlight. This has led some researchers to suggest that alexithymia, a personality construct characterized by altered emotional awareness, reflects a general deficit in interoception. However, tests of this hypothesis have relied on heterogeneous assessment methods, leading to inconsistent results. To shed some light on this issue, we administered a battery of self-report questionnaires of interoception and alexithymia to three samples from Italy, the U.S., and Singapore (N = 814). Correlation and machine learning analyses showed that alexithymia was associated with deficits in both subjective interoceptive accuracy and attention. Alexithymics’ interoceptive deficits were primarily related to difficulty identifying and describing feelings. Interoception showed a weaker association with externally-oriented thinking as operationalized by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and no association with the affective dimension of alexithymia later introduced by the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ). We discuss our results with reference to the theoretical and psychometric differences between these two measures of alexithymia and their shortcomings. Overall, our results support the view that interoceptive deficits are a core component of alexithymia, although the latter cannot be reduced to the former.
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spelling pubmed-86681272021-12-14 Clarifying the relationship between alexithymia and subjective interoception Gaggero, Giulia Bizzego, Andrea Dellantonio, Sara Pastore, Luigi Lim, Mengyu Esposito, Gianluca PLoS One Research Article The long-standing hypothesis that emotions rely on bodily states is back in the spotlight. This has led some researchers to suggest that alexithymia, a personality construct characterized by altered emotional awareness, reflects a general deficit in interoception. However, tests of this hypothesis have relied on heterogeneous assessment methods, leading to inconsistent results. To shed some light on this issue, we administered a battery of self-report questionnaires of interoception and alexithymia to three samples from Italy, the U.S., and Singapore (N = 814). Correlation and machine learning analyses showed that alexithymia was associated with deficits in both subjective interoceptive accuracy and attention. Alexithymics’ interoceptive deficits were primarily related to difficulty identifying and describing feelings. Interoception showed a weaker association with externally-oriented thinking as operationalized by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and no association with the affective dimension of alexithymia later introduced by the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ). We discuss our results with reference to the theoretical and psychometric differences between these two measures of alexithymia and their shortcomings. Overall, our results support the view that interoceptive deficits are a core component of alexithymia, although the latter cannot be reduced to the former. Public Library of Science 2021-12-13 /pmc/articles/PMC8668127/ /pubmed/34898643 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261126 Text en © 2021 Gaggero et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Gaggero, Giulia
Bizzego, Andrea
Dellantonio, Sara
Pastore, Luigi
Lim, Mengyu
Esposito, Gianluca
Clarifying the relationship between alexithymia and subjective interoception
title Clarifying the relationship between alexithymia and subjective interoception
title_full Clarifying the relationship between alexithymia and subjective interoception
title_fullStr Clarifying the relationship between alexithymia and subjective interoception
title_full_unstemmed Clarifying the relationship between alexithymia and subjective interoception
title_short Clarifying the relationship between alexithymia and subjective interoception
title_sort clarifying the relationship between alexithymia and subjective interoception
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8668127/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34898643
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261126
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