Shared and unique interoceptive deficits in high alexithymia and neuroticism.

Interoception is the perception of internal bodily signals. It is considered fundamental to developing emotional awareness. For this reason, interoceptive deficits are often associated with alexithymia, a condition characterized by difficulty identifying feelings (DIF), difficulty describing feelings (DDF), and an externally-oriented style of thinking (EOT).

Clarifying the relationship between alexithymia and subjective interoception.

The long-standing hypothesis that emotions rely on bodily states is back in the spotlight. This has led some researchers to suggest that alexithymia, a personality construct characterized by altered emotional awareness, reflects a general deficit in interoception. However, tests of this hypothesis have relied on heterogeneous assessment methods, leading to inconsistent results.

A Scientometric Review of Alexithymia: Mapping Thematic and Disciplinary Shifts in Half a Century of Research.

The term "alexithymia" was introduced in the lexicon of psychiatry in the early '70s by Sifneos to outline the difficulties manifested by some patients in identifying and describing their own emotions. Since then, the construct has been broadened and partially modified. Today this describes a condition characterized by an altered emotional awareness which leads to difficulties in recognizing your own and others' emotions.

Corrigendum: Alexithymia and Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Complex Relationship.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.

Alexithymia and Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Complex Relationship.

Alexithymia is a personality construct characterized by altered emotional awareness which has been gaining diagnostic prevalence in a range of neuropsychiatric disorders, with notably high rates of overlap with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the nature of its role in ASD symptomatology remains elusive. Here, we distill research at the intersection of alexithymia and ASD.

Above and below the surface: Genetic and cultural factors in the development of values.

In the Attitude-Scenario-Emotion (ASE) model, social relationships are subpersonnally realized by sentiments: a network of emotions/attitudes representing relational values. We discuss how relational values differ from moral values and raise the issue of their ontogeny from genetic and cultural factors. Because relational values develop early in life, they cannot rely solely on cognition as suggested by the notion of attitude.

Axiom, Anguish, and Amazement: How Autistic Traits Modulate Emotional Mental Imagery.

Individuals differ in their ability to feel their own and others' internal states, with those that have more autistic and less empathic traits clustering at the clinical end of the spectrum. However, when we consider semantic competence, this group could compensate with a higher capacity to imagine the meaning of words referring to emotions. This is indeed what we found when we asked people with different levels of autistic and empathic traits to rate the degree of imageability of various kinds of words.

Measuring inconsistencies can lead you forward: Imageability and the x-ception theory.

According to the traditional view, both imageability and concreteness ratings reflect the way word meanings rely on information mediated by the senses. As a consequence, the two measures should and do correlate. The link between these two indexes was already hypothesized and demonstrated by Paivio et al.

Sensing aliveness : an hypothesis on the constitution of the categories 'animate' and 'inanimate'.

This study examines whether the categories ANIMATE/INANIMATE: might be formed on the basis of information available to the cognitive system. We suggest that the discrimination of percepts according to these categories relies on proprioceptive information, which allows the perceiving subject to know that he is 'animate'. Since other 'objects' in the world exhibit movements, reactions, etc.