Department of Psychology and the Integrative Neuroscience Research Center, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881, USA.
Conscious Cogn. 2010 Dec;19(4):1062-8. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2010.05.008. Epub 2010 Jun 9.
Alexithymia is associated with emotion processing deficits, particularly for negative emotional information. However, also common are a high prevalence of somatic symptoms and the perception of somatic sensations as distressing. Although little research has yet been conducted on memory in alexithymia, we hypothesized a paradoxical effect of alexithymia on memory. Specifically, recall of negative emotional words was expected to be reduced in alexithymia, while memory for illness words was expected to be enhanced in alexithymia. Eighty-five high or low alexithymia participants viewed and rated arousing illness-related ("pain"), emotionally positive ("thrill"), negative ("hatred"), and neutral words ("horse"). Recall was assessed 45 min later. High alexithymia participants recalled significantly fewer negative emotion words but also more illness-related words than low alexithymia participants. The results suggest that personal relevance can shape cognitive processing of stimuli, even to enhance retention of a subclass of stimuli whose retention is generally impaired in alexithymia.
述情障碍与情绪处理缺陷有关，特别是对负面情绪信息。然而，述情障碍患者也常伴有躯体症状高发和躯体感觉痛苦的感知。尽管关于述情障碍的记忆研究还很少，但我们假设述情障碍对记忆有一个矛盾的影响。具体来说，我们预计述情障碍患者对负面情绪词的回忆会减少，而对疾病词的记忆会增强。85 名高或低述情障碍参与者观看并评价了令人兴奋的与疾病相关的词（“疼痛”）、情绪积极的词（“兴奋”）、负面的词（“仇恨”）和中性词（“马”）。45 分钟后评估回忆。高述情障碍参与者回忆的负面情绪词明显少于低述情障碍参与者，但回忆的与疾病相关的词却多于低述情障碍参与者。结果表明，个人相关性可以影响对刺激的认知加工，甚至可以增强对一般在述情障碍中保留能力受损的一类刺激的保留。
