Alexithymia may explain the relationship between autistic traits and eating disorder psychopathology.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Autistic people are disproportionately vulnerable to anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders (ED), and within the general population, autistic traits correlate with ED psychopathology. A putative mechanism which may underpin this heightened risk is alexithymia, a difficulty identifying and describing emotional states which is observed in both autism and ED. In two experiments with independent non-clinical samples, we explored whether alexithymia might mediate the heightened risk of eating psychopathology in individuals high in autistic traits.

Methods

Our first experiment used the PROCESS macro for SPSS to examine relationships between alexithymia (measured by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20)), autistic traits (autism quotient (AQ)), and eating psychopat

SUBMITTER: Vuillier L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7406391 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature