Alexithymia and the processing of emotional facial expressions (EFEs): systematic review, unanswered questions and further perspectives.

ABSTRACT: Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties in identifying, differentiating and describing feelings. A high prevalence of alexithymia has often been observed in clinical disorders characterized by low social functioning. This review aims to assess the association between alexithymia and the ability to decode emotional facial expressions (EFEs) within clinical and healthy populations. More precisely, this review has four main objectives: (1) to assess if alexithymia is a better predictor of the ability to decode EFEs than the diagnosis of clinical disorder; (2) to assess the influence of comorbid factors (depression and anxiety disorder) on the ability to decode EFE; (3) to investigate if deficits in decoding EFEs are specific to some levels of processing or task types; (4) to investigate

SUBMITTER: Grynberg D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3426527 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature