Is alexithymia and autism related?

Is alexithymia and autism related?

Although individuals on the autism spectrum experience alexithymia at much higher rates than the general population, autism and alexithymia appear to be distinct, unrelated, and overlapping conditions in which alexithymia seems to influence affective empathy.

Can you have alexithymia without autism?

Despite their frequent co-occurrence, alexithymia and autism are independent constructs. Alexithymia is neither necessary nor sufficient for an autism diagnosis, nor is it universal among autistic individuals. Conversely, many individuals show severe degrees of alexithymia without demonstrating autistic symptoms.

What is alexithymia related to?

Specialty. Psychiatry. Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by the subclinical inability to identify and describe emotions experienced by one’s self. The core characteristic of alexithymia is marked dysfunction in emotional awareness, social attachment, and interpersonal relation.

Do people with alexithymia lack empathy?

Moreover, alexithymia is linked to deficits in empathy, i.e., the ability to take the perspective of others and to understand others’ feelings and intentions. In fact, alexithymia has been found to be a transdiagnostic precursor of empathic difficulties (Valdespino et al., 2017).

Can alexithymia be reversed?

et al. Differential effects of alexithymia subscales on autonomic reactivity and anxiety during social stress. Journal of psychosomatic research 70, 525–533 (2011).

Does alexithymia get worse with age?

For instance, one large-scale study found that the prevalence of alexithymia increased with age, with the highest TAS scores obtained by participants aged 85 years and older (Mattila et al., 2006).

What kind of disorder is alexithymia?

Alexithymia refers to a difficulty in verbalizing emotions, literally, to a lack of a lexicon for describing feelings. Early investigations of patients who have psychosomatic disorders linked an alexithymic response style with diminished dream recall11 and an absence of affect in dreams.

How do you overcome alexithymia?

Treatments

1. cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)
2. group therapy.
3. psychotherapy (also known as “talk therapy”)

Are there different degrees of alexithymia?

There are three subscales as follows: Difficulty in Identifying Feelings (TAS-1), Difficulty in Describing Feelings (TAS-2), and Externally Oriented Thinking (TAS-3). It is considered that the higher the total score, the more the alexithymic level.

How do neurologists test for autism?

The Role of Neurologists in Treating Children with Autism | Interactive Autism Network.

What is the difference between alexithymia and autism?

Individuals who have alexithymia have in common the inability to either verbalize their emotions due to lack of awareness of the emotion, or possible confusion of emotional feelings. This condition has been found to overlap with symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Do emotional processing difficulties reflect co-occurring alexithymia in autism?

Background: New research suggests that, rather than representing a core feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), emotional processing difficulties reflect co-occurring alexithymia. Autistic individuals with alexithymia could therefore represent a specific subgroup of autism who may benefit from tailored interventions.

Is alexithymia a neuropsychiatric disorder?

Front. Psychol., 17 July 2018 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01196 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).

How do alexithymia and autism severity affect expression attributions?

Experiment 1 showed that alexithymia correlates strongly with the precision of expression attributions, whereas autism severity was unrelated to expression–recognition ability.