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A central tenet of many theories of emotion is that emotional states are accompanied by distinct patterns of autonomic activity. However, experimental studies of coherence between subjective and autonomic responses during emotional states provide little evidence of coherence. Crucially, previous studies investigating coherence have either adopted univariate approaches or made limited use of multivariate analytic approaches by investigating subjective and autonomic responses separately. The current study addressed this question using a multivariate dimensional approach to build a common autonomic-subjective affective space incorporating subjective responses and three different autonomic signals (heart rate, skin conductance response, and pupil diameter), measured during an emotion-inducing task, in 51 participants. Results showed that autonomic and subjective responses could be adequately described in a two-dimensional affective space. The first dimension included contributions from subjective and autonomic responses, indicating coherence, while contributions to the second dimension were almost exclusively of autonomic covariance. Thus, while there was a degree of coherence between autonomic and subjective emotional responses, there was substantial structure in autonomic responses that did not covary with subjective emotional experience. This study, therefore, contributes new insights into the relationship between subjective and autonomic emotional responses, and provides a framework for future multimodal emotion research, enabling both hypothesis- and data-driven testing., (© 2023 The Authors. Psychophysiology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Psychophysiological Research.)

Alexithymia, including the inability to identify and express one's own feelings, is a subclinical condition responsible for some of the socioemotional symptoms seen across a range of psychiatric conditions. The language hypothesis of alexithymia posits a language-mediated disruption in the development of discrete emotion concepts from ambiguous affective states, exacerbating the risk of developing alexithymia in language-impaired individuals. To provide a critical evaluation, a systematic review and meta-analysis of 29 empirical studies of language functioning in alexithymia was performed. A modest association was found between alexithymia and multi-domain language deficits (r = -0.14), including structural language, pragmatics, and propensity to use emotional language. A more theoretically-relevant subsample analysis comparing alexithymia levels in language-impaired and typical individuals revealed larger effects, but a limited number of studies adopted this approach. A synthesis of 11 emotional granularity studies also found an association between alexithymia and reduced emotional granularity (r = -0.10). Language impairments seem to increase the risk of alexithymia. Heterogeneous samples and methods suggest the need for studies with improved alexithymia assessments., Competing Interests: Declarations of interest None., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Children with conduct problems (CP) and high levels of callous-unemotional traits (CP/HCU) have been found to have an intact ability to represent other minds, however, they behave in ways that indicate a reduced propensity to consider other people's thoughts and feelings. Here we report findings from three tasks assessing different aspects of mentalising in 81 boys aged 11-16 [Typically developing (TD) n = 27; CP/HCU n = 28; CP and low levels of callous-unemotional traits (CP/LCU) n = 26]. Participants completed the Movie Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC), a task assessing ability/propensity to incorporate judgements concerning an individual's mind into mental state inference; provided a written description of a good friend to assess mind-mindedness; and completed the Social Judgement Task (SJT), a new measure assessing mentalising about antisocial actions. Boys with CP/HCU had more difficulty in accurately inferring others' mental states in the MASC than TD and CP/LCU boys. There were no group differences in the number of mind-related comments as assessed by the mind-mindedness protocol or in responses to the SJT task. These findings suggest that although the ability to represent mental states is intact, CP/HCU boys are less likely to update mental state inferences as a function of different minds.

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD; autistic individuals) may exhibit atypical face perception because they fail to process faces holistically. In the context of this hypothesis, it is critical to determine whether autistic individuals exhibit diminished susceptibility to the composite face illusion, widely regarded as a key marker of holistic face processing. To date, however, previous studies have yielded inconsistent findings. In light of recent evidence suggesting that facial emotion cues increase the strength of the composite face illusion in typical individuals, the present study sought to determine whether the presence of facial emotion also modulates the strength of the composite face illusion in autistic individuals, many of whom experience difficulties recognizing facial expressions. We therefore measured composite face effects in a sample of autistic individuals (N = 20) and matched typical controls (N = 29) using an incidental emotion procedure in which distractor regions varied systematically in their emotion strength. As expected, the presence of facial emotion in the distractor regions of composite face arrangements increased the strength of the illusory distortion induced. The extent of the modulation by facial emotion was similar in the two groups. The composite effects seen in the ASD group were qualitatively and quantitatively similar to those seen in the typical group, suggestive of intact holistic processing in this population., (Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation (FPVS) with oddball stimuli has been used to investigate discrimination of facial identity and emotion, with studies concluding that oddball responses indicate discrimination of faces at the conceptual level (i.e., discrimination of identity and emotion), rather than low-level perceptual (visual, image-based) discrimination. However, because previous studies have utilised identical images as base stimuli, physical differences between base and oddball stimuli, rather than recognition of identity or emotion, may have been responsible for oddball responses. This study tested two new FPVS paradigms designed to distinguish recognition of expressions of emotion from detection of visual change from the base stream. In both paradigms, the oddball emotional expression was different from that of the base stream images. However, in the 'fixed-emotion' paradigm, stimulus image varied at every presentation but the emotion in the base stream remained constant, and in the 'mixed-emotions' paradigm, both stimulus image and emotion varied at every presentation, with only the oddball emotion (disgust) remaining constant. In the fixed-emotion paradigm, typical inversion effects were observed at occipital sites. In the mixed-emotions paradigm, however, inversion effects in a central cluster (indicative of higher level emotion processing) were present in typical participants, but not those with alexithymia (who are impaired at emotion recognition), suggesting that only the mixed-emotions paradigm reflects emotion recognition rather than detection of a lower-level visual change from baseline. These results have significant methodological implications for future FPVS studies (of both facial emotion and identity), suggesting that it is crucial to vary base stimuli sufficiently, such that simple physical differences between base and oddball stimuli cannot give rise to neural oddball responses., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

A range of processes are required for recognizing others' affective states. It is particularly important that we process the perceptual cues providing information about these states. These experiments tested the hypothesis that difficulties with affective state identification in older adults (OAs) arise, at least partly, from deficits in perceptual processing. To this end we presented "point light display" whole body stimuli to healthy OAs and comparison younger adults (YAs) in 3 signal detection experiments. We examined the ability of OAs to recognize visual bodily information-posture and kinematics-and whether impaired recognition of affective states can be explained by deficits in processing these cues. OAs exhibited reduced sensitivity to postural cues (Experiment 1) but not to kinematic cues (Experiment 2) in affectively neutral stimuli. Importantly, they also exhibited reduced sensitivity only to affective states conveyed predominantly through posture (Experiment 3) -that is, the cue they were impaired in perceiving. These findings highlight how affective state identification difficulties in OAs may arise from problems in perceptual processing and demonstrate more widely how it is essential to consider the contribution of perceptual processes to emotion recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Interoception, the perception of the body's internal state, contributes to numerous aspects of higher-order cognition. Several theories suggest a causal role for atypical interoception in specific psychiatric disorders, including a recent claim that atypical interoception represents a transdiagnostic impairment across disorders characterized by reduced perception of one's own emotion (alexithymia). Such theories are supported predominantly by evidence from only one interoceptive domain (cardiac); however, evidence of domain-specific interoceptive ability highlights the need to assess interoception in noncardiac domains. Using novel interoceptive tasks, we demonstrate that individuals high in alexithymic traits show a reduced propensity to utilize interoceptive cues to gauge respiratory output (Experiment 1), reduced accuracy on tasks of muscular effort (Experiment 2), and taste sensitivity (Experiment 3), unrelated to any co-occurring autism, depression, or anxiety. Results suggest that alexithymia reflects a multidomain, multidimensional failure of interoception, which is consistent with theories suggesting that atypical interoception may underpin both symptom commonalities between psychiatric disorders and heterogeneity within disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).)

The ability to empathise relies in part on using one's own affective experience to simulate the affective experience of others. This process is supported by a number of brain areas including the anterior insula (AI), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and the amygdala. Children with conduct problems (CP), and in particular those with high levels of callous-unemotional traits (CP/HCU) present with less empathy than their peers. They also show reduced neural response in areas supporting empathic processing when viewing other people in distress. The current study focused on identifying brain areas co-activated during affective introspection of: i) One's own emotions ('Own emotion'); ii) Others' emotions ('Other emotion'); and iii) One's feelings about others' emotions ('Feel for other') during fearful vs neutral scenarios in typically developing boys (TD; n  = 31), boys with CP/HCU ( n  = 31), and boys with CP and low levels of CU (CP/LCU; n  = 33). The conjunction analysis across conditions within the TD group revealed significant clusters of activation in the AI, ACC/mPFC, and occipital cortex. Conjunction analyses across conditions in the CP/HCU and CP/LCU groups did not identify these areas as significantly activated. However, follow-up analyses were not able to confirm statistically significant differences between groups across the whole network, and Bayes-factor analyses did not provide substantial support for either the null or alternate hypotheses. Post-hoc comparisons indicated that the lack of conjunction effects in the CP/HCU group may reflect reduced affective introspection in the 'Other emotion' and 'Feel for other' conditions, and by reduced affective introspection in the 'Own emotion' condition in the CP/LCU group. These findings provide limited and ultimately equivocal evidence for altered affective introspection regarding others in CP/HCU, and altered affective introspection for own emotions in CP/LCU, and highlight the need for further research to systematically investigate the precise nature of empathy deficits in children with CP.

Empathy - currently defined as the sharing of another's affective state - has been the focus of much psychological and neuroscientific research in the last decade, much of which has been focused on ascertaining the empathic ability of individuals with various clinical conditions. However, most of this work tends to overlook the fact that empathy is the result of a complex process requiring a number of intermediate processing steps. It is therefore the case that describing an individual or group as 'lacking empathy' lacks specificity. We argue for an alternative measurement framework, in which we explain variance in empathic response in terms of individual differences in the ability to identify another's emotional state ('emotion identification'), and the degree to which identification of another's state causes a corresponding state in the self ('affect sharing'). We describe how existing empathy paradigms need to be modified in order to fit within this measurement framework, and illustrate the utility of this approach with reference to examples from both cognitive neuroscience and clinical psychology., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Contextual cues derived from body postures bias how typical observers categorize facial emotion; the same facial expression may be perceived as anger or disgust when aligned with angry and disgusted body postures. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are thought to have difficulties integrating information from disparate visual regions to form unitary percepts, and may be less susceptible to visual illusions induced by context. The current study investigated whether individuals with ASD exhibit diminished integration of emotion cues extracted from faces and bodies. Individuals with and without ASD completed a binary expression classification task, categorizing facial emotion as 'Disgust' or 'Anger'. Facial stimuli were drawn from a morph continuum blending facial disgust and anger, and presented in isolation, or accompanied by an angry or disgusted body posture. Participants were explicitly instructed to disregard the body context. Contextual modulation was inferred from a shift in the resulting psychometric functions.Contrary to prediction, observers with ASD showed typical integration of emotion cues from the face and body. Correlation analyses suggested a relationship between the ability to categorize emotion from isolated faces, and susceptibility to contextual influence within the ASD sample; individuals with imprecise facial emotion classification were influenced more by body posture cues., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

It has been proposed that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is associated with difficulties perceiving the internal state of one's body (i.e., impaired interoception), causing the socio-emotional deficits which are a diagnostic feature of the condition. However, research indicates that alexithymia - characterized by difficulties in recognizing emotions from internal bodily sensations - is also linked to atypical interoception. Elevated rates of alexithymia in the autistic population have been shown to underpin several socio-emotional impairments thought to be symptomatic of ASD, raising the possibility that interoceptive difficulties in ASD are also due to co-occurring alexithymia. Following this line of inquiry, the present study examined the relative impact of alexithymia and autism on interoceptive accuracy (IA). Across two experiments, it was found that alexithymia, not autism, was associated with atypical interoception. Results indicate that interoceptive impairments should not be considered a feature of ASD, but instead due to co-occurring alexithymia., (Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

The ability to represent mental states (theory of mind [ToM]) is crucial in understanding individual differences in social ability and social impairments evident in conditions such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) is a popular measure of ToM ability, validated in part by the poor performance of those with ASD. However, the RMET requires recognition of facial emotion, which is impaired in those with alexithymia, which frequently co-occurs with ASD. Thus, it is unclear whether the RMET indexes emotion recognition, associated with alexithymia, or ToM, associated with ASD. We therefore investigated the independent contributions of ASD and alexithymia to performance on the RMET. ASD and alexithymia-matched control participants did not differ on RMET performance, whereas ASD participants demonstrated impaired performance on an alternative test of ToM, the Movie for Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC). Furthermore, alexithymia, but not ASD diagnosis, significantly influenced RMET performance but did not affect MASC performance. These results suggest that the RMET measures emotion recognition rather than ToM ability and support the alexithymia hypothesis of emotion-related deficits in ASD. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

The difficulties encountered by individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when interacting with neurotypical (NT, i.e. nonautistic) individuals are usually attributed to failure to recognize the emotions and mental states of their NT interaction partner. It is also possible, however, that at least some of the difficulty is due to a failure of NT individuals to read the mental and emotional states of ASD interaction partners. Previous research has frequently observed deficits of typical facial emotion recognition in individuals with ASD, suggesting atypical representations of emotional expressions. Relatively little research, however, has investigated the ability of individuals with ASD to produce recognizable emotional expressions, and thus, whether NT individuals can recognize autistic emotional expressions. The few studies which have investigated this have used only NT observers, making it impossible to determine whether atypical representations are shared among individuals with ASD, or idiosyncratic. This study investigated NT and ASD participants' ability to recognize emotional expressions produced by NT and ASD posers. Three posing conditions were included, to determine whether potential group differences are due to atypical cognitive representations of emotion, impaired understanding of the communicative value of expressions, or poor proprioceptive feedback. Results indicated that ASD expressions were recognized less well than NT expressions, and that this is likely due to a genuine deficit in the representation of typical emotional expressions in this population. Further, ASD expressions were equally poorly recognized by NT individuals and those with ASD, implicating idiosyncratic, rather than common, atypical representations of emotional expressions in ASD., (© 2015 The Authors Autism Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Society for Autism Research.)

It is often difficult to distinguish strangers' permanent facial shapes from their transient facial expressions, for example, whether they are scowling or have narrow-set eyes. Overinterpretation of ambiguous cues may contribute to the rapid character judgments we make about others. Someone with narrow eyes might be judged untrustworthy, because of strong associations between facial anger and threat. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the trait judgments made by individuals with severe alexithymia, associated with impaired recognition of facial emotion. Consistent with the hypothesis, alexithymic participants demonstrated reduced interrater consistency when judging the character traits of unfamiliar faces, and the presence of subtle emotions. Nevertheless, where alexithymics perceived, or misperceived, emotion cues, the character traits inferred thereafter were broadly typical. The finding that individuals with developmental deficits of emotion recognition exhibit atypical attribution of character traits, confirms the hypothesis that emotion-recognition mechanisms play a causal role in character judgments., ((c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).)

One's own emotional response toward a hypothetical action can influence judgments of its moral acceptability. Some individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit atypical emotional processing, and moral judgments. Research suggests, however, that emotional deficits in ASD are due to co-occurring alexithymia, meaning atypical moral judgments in ASD may be due to alexithymia also. Individuals with and without ASD (matched for alexithymia) judged the moral acceptability of emotion-evoking statements and identified the emotion evoked. Moral acceptability judgments were predicted by alexithymia. Crucially, however, this relationship held only for individuals without ASD. While ASD diagnostic status did not directly predict either judgment, those with ASD did not base their moral acceptability judgments on emotional information. Findings are consistent with evidence demonstrating that decision-making is less subject to emotional biases in those with ASD., ((c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).)

This article is part of a Special Issue "Puberty and Adolescence". There is increasing evidence that puberty plays an important role in the structural and functional brain development seen in adolescence, but little is known of the pubertal influence on changes in functional connectivity. We explored how pubertal indicators (salivary concentrations of testosterone, oestradiol and DHEA; pubertal stage; menarcheal status) relate to functional connectivity between components of a mentalising network identified to be engaged in social emotion processing by our prior work, using psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis. Female adolescents aged 11 to 13years were scanned whilst silently reading scenarios designed to evoke either social emotions (guilt and embarrassment) or basic emotions (disgust and fear), of which only social compared to basic emotions require the representation of another person's mental states. Pubertal stage and menarcheal status were used to assign participants to pre/early or mid/late puberty groups. We found increased functional connectivity between the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) and the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) during social relative to basic emotion processing. Moreover, increasing oestradiol concentrations were associated with increased functional connectivity between the DMPFC and the right TPJ during social relative to basic emotion processing, independent of age. Our analysis of the PPI data by phenotypic pubertal status showed that more advanced puberty stage was associated with enhanced functional connectivity between the DMPFC and the left anterior temporal cortex (ATC) during social relative to basic emotion processing, also independent of age. Our results suggest increased functional maturation of the social brain network with the advancement of puberty in girls., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Despite considerable research into whether face perception is impaired in autistic individuals, clear answers have proved elusive. In the present study, we sought to determine whether co-occurring alexithymia (characterized by difficulties interpreting emotional states) may be responsible for face-perception deficits previously attributed to autism. Two experiments were conducted using psychophysical procedures to determine the relative contributions of alexithymia and autism to identity and expression recognition. Experiment 1 showed that alexithymia correlates strongly with the precision of expression attributions, whereas autism severity was unrelated to expression-recognition ability. Experiment 2 confirmed that alexithymia is not associated with impaired ability to detect expression variation; instead, results suggested that alexithymia is associated with difficulties interpreting intact sensory descriptions. Neither alexithymia nor autism was associated with biased or imprecise identity attributions. These findings accord with the hypothesis that the emotional symptoms of autism are in fact due to co-occurring alexithymia and that existing diagnostic criteria may need to be revised.

Background: Childhood adversity is associated with significantly increased risk of psychiatric disorder. To date, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of children have mainly focused on institutionalisation and investigated conscious processing of affect., Aims: To investigate neural response to pre-attentively presented affect cues in a community sample of children with documented experiences of maltreatment in the home., Method: A masked dot-probe paradigm involving pre-attentive presentation of angry, happy and neutral facial expressions was employed. Eighteen maltreated children were compared with 23 carefully matched non-maltreated peers., Results: Increased neural response was observed in the right amygdala for pre-attentively presented angry and happy faces in maltreated v. non-maltreated children. Level of amygdala activation was negatively associated with age at onset for several abuse subtypes., Conclusions: Maltreatment is associated with heightened neural response to positive and negative facial affect, even to stimuli outside awareness. This may represent a latent neural risk factor for future psychiatric disorder.

The social brain undergoes developmental change during adolescence, and pubertal hormones are hypothesized to contribute to this development. We used fMRI to explore how pubertal indicators (salivary concentrations of testosterone, oestradiol and DHEA; pubertal stage; menarcheal status) relate to brain activity during a social emotion task. Forty-two females aged 11.1 to 13.7 years underwent fMRI scanning while reading scenarios pertaining either to social emotions, which require the representation of another person's mental states, or to basic emotions, which do not. Pubertal stage and menarcheal status were used to assign girls to early or late puberty groups. Across the entire sample, the contrast between social versus basic emotion resulted in activity within the social brain network, including dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), the posterior superior temporal sulcus, and the anterior temporal cortex (ATC) in both hemispheres. Increased hormone levels (independent of age) were associated with higher left ATC activity during social emotion processing. More advanced age (independent of hormone levels) was associated with lower DMPFC activity during social emotion processing. Our results suggest functionally dissociable effects of pubertal hormones and age on the adolescent social brain., (© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

It has been proposed that there is a core impairment in autism spectrum conditions (ASC) to the mirror neuron system (MNS): If observed actions cannot be mapped onto the motor commands required for performance, higher order sociocognitive functions that involve understanding another person's perspective, such as theory of mind, may be impaired. However, evidence of MNS impairment in ASC is mixed. The present study used an 'automatic imitation' paradigm to assess MNS functioning in adults with ASC and matched controls, when observing emotional facial actions. Participants performed a pre-specified angry or surprised facial action in response to observed angry or surprised facial actions, and the speed of their action was measured with motion tracking equipment. Both the ASC and control groups demonstrated automatic imitation of the facial actions, such that responding was faster when they acted with the same emotional expression that they had observed. There was no difference between the two groups in the magnitude of the effect. These findings suggest that previous apparent demonstrations of impairments to the MNS in ASC may be driven by a lack of visual attention to the stimuli or motor sequencing impairments, and therefore that there is, in fact, no MNS impairment in ASC. We discuss these findings with reference to the literature on MNS functioning and imitation in ASC, as well as theories of the role of the MNS in sociocognitive functioning in typical development., (Copyright 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In this fMRI study, we investigated the development between adolescence and adulthood of the neural processing of social emotions. Unlike basic emotions (such as disgust and fear), social emotions (such as guilt and embarrassment) require the representation of another's mental states. Nineteen adolescents (10-18 years) and 10 adults (22-32 years) were scanned while thinking about scenarios featuring either social or basic emotions. In both age groups, the anterior rostral medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) was activated during social versus basic emotion. However, adolescents activated a lateral part of the MPFC for social versus basic emotions, whereas adults did not. Relative to adolescents, adults showed higher activity in the left temporal pole for social versus basic emotions. These results show that, although the MPFC is activated during social emotion in both adults and adolescents, adolescents recruit anterior (MPFC) regions more than do adults, and adults recruit posterior (temporal) regions more than do adolescents.

Autism is associated with an inability to identify and distinguish one's own feelings. We assessed this inability using alexithymia and empathy questionnaires, and used fMRI to investigate brain activity while introspecting on emotion. Individuals with high functioning autism/Asperger syndrome (HFA/AS) were compared with matched controls. Participants rated stimuli from the International Affective Picture System twice, once according to the degree of un/pleasantness that the pictures induced, and once according to their color balance. The groups differed significantly on both alexithymia and empathy questionnaires. Alexithymia and lack of empathy were correlated, indicating a link between understanding one's own and others' emotions. For both groups a strong relationship between questionnaire scores and brain activity was found in the anterior insula (AI), when participants were required to assess their feelings to unpleasant pictures. Regardless of self-reported degree of emotional awareness, individuals with HFA/AS differed from controls when required to introspect on their feelings by showing reduced activation in self-reflection/mentalizing regions. Thus, we conclude that difficulties in emotional awareness are related to hypoactivity in AI in both individuals with HFA/AS and controls, and that the particular difficulties in emotional awareness in individuals with HFA/AS are not related to their impairments in self-reflection/mentalizing.

Despite the heterogeneity in autism, socioemotional difficulties are often framed as universal. Increasing evidence, however, suggests that socioemotional difficulties may be explained by alexithymia, a distinct yet frequently co-occurring condition. If, as some propose, autistic traits are responsible for socioemotional impairments, then alexithymia may itself be a symptom of autism. We aimed to determine whether alexithymia should be considered a product of autism or regarded as a separate condition. Using factor-analytic and network approaches, we provide evidence that alexithymic and autistic traits are distinct. We argue that: (1) models of socioemotional processing in autism should conceptualise difficulties as intrinsic to alexithymia; and (2) assessment of alexithymia is crucial for diagnosis and personalised interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new task ('CARER') was used to test claims of reduced empathy in autistic adults. CARER measures emotion identification (ability to identify another's affective state), affective empathy (degree to which another's affective state causes a matching state in the Empathiser) and affect sharing (degree to which the Empathiser's state matches the state they attribute to another). After controlling for alexithymia, autistic individuals showed intact affect sharing, emotion identification and affective empathy. Results suggested reduced retrospective socio-emotional processing, likely due to a failure to infer neurotypical mental states. Thus, autism may be associated with difficulties inferring another's affective state retrospectively, but not with sharing that state. Therefore, when appropriate measures are used, autistic individuals do not show a lack of empathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Symptoms of internalizing disorders such as depression and anxiety increase in adolescence, especially in females. However, gender differences in depression and anxiety symptoms emerge only after puberty onset. Levels of alexithymia, characterized by difficulties identifying and describing one’s emotions, are elevated in depression and anxiety, and fluctuate across adolescence in a gender-specific manner. This study investigated changes in alexithymia across adolescence, and explored the potential role of alexithymia in the development of depression and anxiety, separately for females and males. Accordingly, 140 adolescents aged 11 to 21 years (77 female) completed self-report measures of alexithymia, depression and anxiety, and pubertal development. For females alone, pubertal maturation was associated with alexithymic traits (specifically difficulties identifying and describing feelings), as well as symptoms of depression and anxiety. After accounting for alexithymia, the relationship between puberty and depression and anxiety was absent or reduced in females. Thus, alexithymic traits may have differential consequences for males and females, and possibly contribute towards increased depression and anxiety symptoms in females during adolescence. We propose that developmental changes in alexithymia should be considered when studying the onset and development of internalizing psychological disorders during adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accumulating evidence indicates that co-occurring alexithymia underlies several facets of the social-emotional difficulties common in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. The mechanisms involved, however, remain poorly understood because measuring alexithymia relies heavily on self-report. To address this issue, carefully matched groups of individuals with autism spectrum disorder and comparison participants rated 70 emotion-inducing pictures on subjectively experienced arousal while skin conductance responses were monitored objectively. The results demonstrated reliable correlations between these subjective and objective measures, and in both groups, around 25% of individual differences in this correlation (i.e. in emotion-relevant interoception) were accounted for by self-reported alexithymia. In the context of the wider literature, this suggests that alexithymia involves a disruption in how physiological arousal modulates the subjective experience of feelings in those with and without a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. Since mindfulness-based therapies foster greater awareness of thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations, the findings also have implications for how the symptoms and consequences of alexithymia (e.g. anxiety) might be ameliorated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasing empirical and theoretical work on empathy, particularly on the content of empathic representations, there is a relative lack of consensus regarding the information processing necessary for empathy to occur. Here we attempt to delineate a mechanistic cognitive model of empathy in order to provide a framework within which neuroimaging work on empathy can be located, and which may be used in order to understand various disorders characterised by atypical levels of empathy. To this end data from individuals with psychopathy, autism, and alexithymia inform the model, and the model is used to provide a unifying framework for any empathy impairments seen in these disorders. The model adopts a developmental framework and tries to address the four difficult questions of empathy: How do we know what another is feeling? What is the role of theory of mind in empathy? How does the state of another cause a corresponding state in the self? How do we represent another's emotion once emotional contagion has taken place? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to attribute thoughts, intentions and beliefs to others. This involves component processes, including cognitive perspective taking (cognitive ToM) and understanding emotions (affective ToM). This study assessed the distinction and overlap of neural processes involved in these respective components, and also investigated their development between adolescence and adulthood. While data suggest that ToM develops between adolescence and adulthood, these populations have not been compared on cognitive and affective ToM domains. Using fMRI with 15 adolescent (aged 11–16 years) and 15 adult (aged 24–40 years) males, we assessed neural responses during cartoon vignettes requiring cognitive ToM, affective ToM or physical causality comprehension (control). An additional aim was to explore relationships between fMRI data and self-reported empathy. Both cognitive and affective ToM conditions were associated with neural responses in the classic ToM network across both groups, although only affective ToM recruited medial/ventromedial PFC (mPFC/vmPFC). Adolescents additionally activated vmPFC more than did adults during affective ToM. The specificity of the mPFC/vmPFC response during affective ToM supports evidence from lesion studies suggesting that vmPFC may integrate affective information during ToM. Furthermore, the differential neural response in vmPFC between adult and adolescent groups indicates developmental changes in affective ToM processing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Recent developmental cognitive neuroscience research has supported the notion that puberty and adolescence are periods of profound socio-emotional development. The current study was designed to investigate whether the onset of puberty marks an increase in the awareness of complex, or “mixed,” emotions. Eighty-three female participants (aged 9–16years) were divided into three groups according to a self-report measure of puberty stage (early-, mid- and post-puberty). Participants were presented with emotional scenarios, and used four linear scales to rate their emotional response to each scenario. Scenarios were designed to evoke social emotions (embarrassment or guilt) or basic emotions (anger or fear), where social emotions are defined as those which require the representation of others'' mental states. We measured the relative complexity or “mixedness” of emotional responses, that is, the degree to which participants reported feeling more than one emotion for a given scenario. We found that mixed emotion reporting increased between early- and post-puberty for social emotion scenarios, and showed no relationship with age, whereas there was no change in mixed emotion reporting for basic emotion scenarios across age or puberty groups. This suggests that the awareness of mixed emotions develops during the course of puberty, and that this development is specific to social emotions. Results are discussed in the context of brain development across puberty and adolescence, with speculation regarding the potential implications for education. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Findings are mixed regarding the link between theory of mind (ToM) and alexithymia. • We provide a taxonomy of ToM measures and their relationship with alexithymia. • Alexithymia relates to poor ToM where tasks involve emotion recognition. • Alexithymia may also relate to a reduced propensity to engage in ToM. • This review highlights a need to consider the processes quantified by ToM tasks. Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to represent the mental states of oneself and others, is an essential social skill disrupted across many psychiatric conditions. The transdiagnostic nature of ToM impairment means it is plausible that ToM impairment is related to alexithymia (difficulties identifying and describing one's own emotions), as alexithymia is seen across psychiatric conditions. Whilst many studies have examined links between alexithymia and ToM, results are mixed. Therefore, the purpose of this systematic review is to provide a taxonomy of ToM tests and assess their relationship with alexithymia. Tests are grouped according to whether they assess propensity to engage spontaneously in ToM or accuracy of ToM inferences, with tests further subdivided into those that do, and do not, require emotion recognition. A review of 63 suitable studies suggests that alexithymia is often associated with reduced ToM, and inaccurate ToM when tasks require emotion recognition. This latter finding appears due to impaired emotion recognition, rather than ToM impairment per se. Further directions and considerations for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rødgaard and colleagues (2019) confirmed our finding of a negative relationship between performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test and alexithymia, regardless of autism diagnosis. In their analysis of our cognitive Theory of Mind data, however, they did not control for autistic traits, which covary with alexithymia. Here we demonstrate that when autistic traits are controlled for, there is no significant association between alexithymia and cognitive theory of mind performance in participants with autism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interoception, the perception of one’s internal state, is commonly quantified using the heartbeat counting task (HCT) – which is thought to be a measure of cardiac interoceptive sensitivity (accuracy). Interoceptive sensitivity has been associated with a number of clinical traits and aspects of higher order cognition, including emotion processing and decision-making. It has been proposed that alexithymia (difficulties identifying and describing one’s own emotions) is associated with impaired interoceptive sensitivity, but new research questions this association. Problematically, much evidence attesting to the absence of this association has been conducted using the HCT, a measure affected by various physiological and psychological factors. Here, we present novel data (N = 287) examining the relationship between alexithymia and HCT performance, controlling for a number of potential confounds. Inclusion of these control measures reveals the predicted negative relationship between alexithymia and HCT performance. Results are discussed with regard to difficulties quantifying interoceptive sensitivity using the HCT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognition of emotional facial expressions is considered to be atypical in autism. This difficulty is thought to be due to the way that facial expressions are visually explored. Evidence for atypical visual exploration of emotional faces in autism is, however, equivocal. We propose that, where observed, atypical visual exploration of emotional facial expressions is due to alexithymia, a distinct but frequently co-occurring condition. In this eye-tracking study we tested the alexithymia hypothesis using a number of recent methodological advances to study eye gaze during several emotion processing tasks (emotion recognition, intensity judgements, free gaze), in 25 adults with, and 45 without, autism. A multilevel polynomial modelling strategy was used to describe the spatiotemporal dynamics of eye gaze to emotional facial expressions. Converging evidence from traditional and novel analysis methods revealed that atypical gaze to the eyes is best predicted by alexithymia in both autistic and non-autistic individuals. Information theoretic analyses also revealed differential effects of task on gaze patterns as a function of alexithymia, but not autism. These findings highlight factors underlying atypical emotion processing in autistic individuals, with wide-ranging implications for emotion research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]