1 Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.
2 University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
Assessment. 2019 Apr;26(3):364-374. doi: 10.1177/1073191117698220. Epub 2017 Mar 27.
Alexithymia is a clinically relevant personality construct characterized by difficulties identifying and describing feelings, externally oriented thinking, and impoverished imaginal processes. Previous taxometric investigations provided evidence that alexithymia is best conceptualized as a continuous dimension rather than a discrete type, at least when assessed with the self-report 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale. The aim of the current study was to test the categorical versus dimensional structure of alexithymia using the recently developed Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia. Three nonredundant taxometric procedures (MAXCOV, MAMBAC, and L-Mode) were performed on the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia subscale scores from a multinational sample of 842 adults. All taxometric procedures produced unambiguously dimensional solutions, providing further evidence that the core alexithymia features are continuously distributed in the population. Discussion focuses on the theoretical, assessment, and clinical implications of these findings for the alexithymia construct.
述情障碍是一种具有临床意义的人格结构，其特征为难以识别和描述感受、以外部思维为主以及想象过程贫瘠。先前的分类测量研究提供了证据，表明述情障碍最好被视为连续维度，而不是离散类型，至少在使用 20 项多伦多述情障碍量表进行自我报告评估时是这样。本研究的目的是使用最近开发的多伦多述情障碍结构化访谈来检验述情障碍的类别与维度结构。对来自 842 名成年人的跨国样本的多伦多述情障碍结构化访谈子量表评分进行了三种非冗余分类测量程序（MAXCOV、MAMBAC 和 L 模式）。所有分类测量程序都产生了明确的维度解决方案，进一步证明核心述情障碍特征在人群中呈连续分布。讨论重点关注这些发现对述情障碍结构的理论、评估和临床意义。
