Starita Francesca, di Pellegrino Giuseppe
Center for Studies and Research in Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Cesena, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2018 Dec 18;9:2587. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02587. eCollection 2018.
Alexithymia is a subclinical trait defined by difficulties in identifying and describing feelings and a cognitive style avoidant of introspection. Extensive literature shows that alexithymia is characterized by multifaceted impairments in processing emotional stimuli. Nevertheless, the mechanisms that may account for such impairments remain elusive. Here, we hypothesize that alexithymia may be understood as impairment in learning the emotional value of one's own actions and test this comparing performance of participants with high (HA) and low (LA) levels of alexithymia on a probabilistic selection task. Results show that, compared to LA, HA need more time to learn the value of individual stimuli and associated actions as difference in reinforcement rate between stimuli decreases. In addition, HA appear less able to generalize the value of previously learned actions that lead to a negative outcome, to make adaptive choices in a new context, requiring more time to avoid the most negative stimulus between two negative stimuli. Together, the results indicate that individuals with alexithymia show impaired learning of the value of aversively motivated actions. We argue that this impairment may hinder the construction of internal representations of emotional stimuli and actions and represent a mechanism that may account for the difficulties of alexithymia in processing emotional stimuli.
述情障碍是一种亚临床特质，其定义为识别和描述情感存在困难以及具有回避内省的认知风格。大量文献表明，述情障碍的特征是在处理情感刺激方面存在多方面的损害。然而，可能导致这种损害的机制仍然不清楚。在此，我们假设述情障碍可以被理解为在学习自身行为的情感价值方面存在损害，并通过比较高述情障碍水平（HA）和低述情障碍水平（LA）的参与者在概率选择任务中的表现来对此进行测试。结果表明，与LA相比，随着刺激之间强化率差异的减小，HA需要更多时间来学习单个刺激和相关行为的价值。此外，HA似乎不太能够将导致负面结果的先前学习行为的价值进行泛化，以便在新情境中做出适应性选择，需要更多时间来在两个负面刺激之间避开最负面的刺激。总之，结果表明述情障碍个体在厌恶动机行为的价值学习方面存在损害。我们认为这种损害可能会阻碍情感刺激和行为的内部表征的构建，并代表一种可能解释述情障碍在处理情感刺激方面困难的机制。
