Alexithymia and the conceptualization of emotions: A study of language use and semantic knowledge

A marked difficulty in verbalizing emotions is considered a core characteristic of the personality trait of alexithymia. In a study with 52 low- and 50 high-alexithymic, healthy subjects, covering a wide age range, semi-standardized interviews covering emotional topics and explicitly addressing the concept level of emotion were conducted. High-alexithymic subjects produced fewer different types of emotions words and fewer synonyms for a target emotion than low-alexithymics indicating that the diversity of the semantic space of emotion words is reduced in alexithymia. Interestingly, compared to low-alexithymics high-alexithymic subjects reported fewer symptomatic, physiological-expressive terms to describe emotions. This result suggests that experiential aspects of the proposed emotion schemata in alexithymics are less differentiated, supporting the idea of a difficulty in emotion conceptualization.

► Interviews were conducted with healthy high- and low-alexithymics.
► The representation of emotion schemata was investigated by linguistic analysis.
► High-alexithymics show a reduced diversity of the semantic space of emotion words.
► High-alexithymics show less differentiated experiential facets of emotion schemata.