Alexithymia and the Evaluation of Emotionally Valenced Scenes.

Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulties identifying and describing feelings (DIF and DDF) and an externally oriented thinking (EOT) style. The primary aim of the present study was to investigate links between alexithymia and the evaluation of emotional scenes. We also investigated whether viewers' evaluations of emotional scenes were better predicted by specific alexithymic traits or by individual differences in sensory processing sensitivity (SPS).

Alexithymic traits predict the speed of classifying non-literal statements using nonverbal cues.

There is increasing interest in exploring the impact of alexithymia on interpersonal interactions. This study explored relationships between alexithymia and the complex mentalising skills needed to infer how a speaker intended a non-literal statement to be understood. A sample of university students ( = 70) viewed videotaped exchanges and attempted to classify remarks as literal, sarcastic, jocular, or white lies.

Ganglion cell loss and age-related visual loss: a cortical pooling analysis.

Purpose: To evaluate the ability of the cortical pooling model to predict the effects of random, mild ganglion cell loss, we compared the predictions of the model with the age-related loss and variability in achromatic and chromatic contrast sensitivity.

Methods: The relative sensitivity to small (0.5 degrees ) and large (3.