Matthew Hutnyan (U): Alexithymia and Self-Referential Processing in a Healthy Population

Success in the social world is said to be contingent on how effectively one can decipher the mental and emotional states of others. A growing body of evidence links this ability, known as social cognition, with two psychological constructs: alexithymia – difficulty identifying and describing one’s own emotions – and self-referential processing (SRP) – the process through which we use knowledge of the self to interpret information. This study (n = 396) set out to directly examine the relationship between alexithymia and SRP in a sample of non-clinical individuals. Multilevel modeling was utilized to examine differences in accuracy between words presented in the “self” condition versus the “physical” condition, and then to examine whether alexithymia moderated the effect of referent condition when controlling for age, gender, and depressive symptoms. Results indicated that participants were more accurate at recognizing words that were presented originally with a “self” referent than words presented with a “physical” referent (b = -.39, 95% CI [-.41, -.37], p < .001) and that levels of alexithymia were linked with SRP task accuracy, such that as levels of alexithymia increased, accuracy in the “self” condition decreased. These findings establish a link between alexithymia and SRP at the behavioral level for the first time.