| Concept of alexithymia that earliest from the patient’s clinical practice psychosomatic diseases was proposed by Sifneos. The main manifestations are: emotion recognition difficulties, it is difficult to distinguish between physical feelings and emotions; emotion difficult to describe in words; unimaginative; extraversion way of thinking, the lack of concern for their own heart, and will focus too much on the details of external things( taylor, Bagby & Parker, 1997). In addition to traditional patients with psychosomatic diseases earlier studies have found alexithymia features, other physical and mental disorders will also exhibit alexithymia features, such as neurosis, personality disorders, substance abuse, etc.(Gong Huoliang, 2008). Studies have shown that the presence of alexithymia on non-verbal(including facial expressions, emotion pictures, etc.) and emotional language information processing barrier, but also exhibited executive dysfunction. Based on previous studies, this study by TAS-20 filter alexithymia high-score and low-score as a reference study, part of the study using music as emotional material, investigate alexithymia mood music recognition feature, compared to other emotional stimuli similarities and differences, to further verify the presence or absence of alexithymia negative emotional stimuli specific processing defects; part of the study using emotional words as emotional stimuli, explore of executive function characteristics on emotional words of alexithymia, including inhibitory control, tasks shifting and information dating; considering the relationship between emotional cognitive deficits and executive function of alexithymia. This study will explore the possible mechanism of alexithymia that lacking of language expression for emotional state.The main results are as follows:Study 1: Group main effect in the recognition correct rate, reaction time and emotional intensity assessment score of musical emotion are not significant; and high-score group’s recognition correct rate of anger was significantly lower than the low-score group(p <.01) and recognition correct rate of anger is significantly lower than the other four emotions(p <.01). High-score group’s emotional intensity score of happy music was significantly lower than the low-score group(p =.06).Study 2:(1) Group main effect in correct rate and reaction time of the GO-reaction to emotional words are not significant, while correct rate of high-score group’s GO-reaction to negative words was significantly lower than that of the low-score group(p <0.05), and reaction time significantly longer than the low-score group(p <0.05). Reaction time of the GO-reaction to negative emotional words was significantly longer than that of positive emotional words in high-score group(p <0.05). In terms of the single task of negative emotional words, correct rate of high-score group was significantly lower than that of the low-score group and reaction time significantly longer than the low-score group(p <0.01).(2) Group main effect in correct rate and reaction time of shifting tasks to emotional words are not significant, the correct rate of shifting tasks to positive emotional words is significantly higher than that of negative emotional words in high-score group and low-score group(p < 0.05).(3) Group main effect in correct rate of dating tasks to emotional words are not significant, the correct rate of dating tasks to positive emotional words is significantly higher than that of negative emotional words in high-score group and low-score group(p < 0.05).This study indicates that:(1) Alexithymia individuals have no obvious defects of recognition of musical emotion; while alexithymia individuals have identification difficulties to angry music; emotional intensity score of happy music of alexithymia high-score group was significantly lower than the low-score group.(2) Alexithymia individuals’ inhibitory control ability to emotional words in general have no obvious defects, but the particular kind of emotional words presence processing defects, showed negative emotion stimuli processing difficulties and positive emotional stimuli inhibitory defects.(3) Alexithymia individuals’ shifting and dating ability to emotional words in general have no obvious defects, whether or not the individual alexithymia, positive emotion can promote their shifting and dating function.In summary, alexithymia individuals have processing difficulties to particular musical emotion, manifested as difficult to identify anger and emotional pleasure experience is not deep; executive dysfunction of emotional words reflected in the inhibitory control task, showed negative emotion stimuli processing difficulties and positive emotional stimuli inhibitory defects. |
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