Alexithymia Is Associated With Deficits in Visual Search for Emotional Faces in Clinical Depression.

ABSTRACT: Background: The concept of alexithymia is characterized by difficulties identifying and describing one's emotions. Alexithymic individuals are impaired in the recognition of others' emotional facial expressions. Alexithymia is quite common in patients suffering from major depressive disorder. The face-in-the-crowd task is a visual search paradigm that assesses processing of multiple facial emotions. In the present eye-tracking study, the relationship between alexithymia and visual processing of facial emotions was examined in clinical depression. Materials and Methods: Gaze behavior and manual response times of 20 alexithymic and 19 non-alexithymic depressed patients were compared in a face-in-the-crowd task. Alexithymia was empirically measured via the 20-item Toronto

SUBMITTER: Suslow T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8275928 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature