Alexithymia and the processing of emotional facial expressions (EFEs): Systematic review, unanswered questions and further perspectives
PLoS ONE. 2012-08-23; 7(8): e42429
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0042429
Read on PubMed
1. PLoS One. 2012;7(8):e42429. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0042429. Epub 2012 Aug
23.
Alexithymia and the processing of emotional facial expressions (EFEs):
systematic review, unanswered questions and further perspectives.
Grynberg D(1), Chang B, Corneille O, Maurage P, Vermeulen N, Berthoz S, Luminet
O.
Author information:
(1)Research Institute for Psychological Sciences, Université catholique de
Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
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 if the deficits are specific to particular EFEs. Twenty four studies
(behavioural and neuroimaging) were identified through a computerized literature
search of Psycinfo, PubMed, and Web of Science databases from 1990 to 2010. Data
on methodology, clinical characteristics, and possible confounds were analyzed.
The review revealed that: (1) alexithymia is associated with deficits in
labelling EFEs among clinical disorders, (2) the level of depression and anxiety
partially account for the decoding deficits, (3) alexithymia is associated with
reduced perceptual abilities, and is likely to be associated with impaired
semantic representations of emotional concepts, and (4) alexithymia is
associated with neither specific EFEs nor a specific valence. These studies are
discussed with respect to processes involved in the recognition of EFEs. Future
directions for research on emotion perception are also discussed.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0042429
PMCID: PMC3426527
PMID: 22927931 [Indexed for MEDLINE]
Conflict of interest statement: Competing Interests: The authors have declared
that no competing interests exist.