Connolly Hannah L, Young Andrew W, Lewis Gary J
Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham.
Department of Psychology, University of York, Heslington.
Cogn Emot. 2020 Dec;34(8):1621-1631. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2020.1789850. Epub 2020 Jul 6.
Alexithymia is a personality construct characterised most notably by a difficulty in identifying and expressing feelings. Although the emotional difficulties in alexithymia are well established, to date little work has examined its relationship to broader cognitive abilities, such as general intelligence. Across three independent, healthy adult samples (Ns = 389, 318, & 273), we examined whether alexithymia was associated with general intelligence. In all three samples, we observed a significant negative association between alexithymia and general intelligence. In two of the samples, general intelligence was a significant predictor of alexithymia even when accounting for performance on tests of facial emotion recognition ability and supramodal emotion recognition ability (measured with faces, bodies, and voices). From a theoretical perspective, these results suggest that models of alexithymia need to incorporate a role for more generalised cognitive functioning. From a practical perspective, studies examining links between alexithymia and clinical disorders, many of which have known links to general intelligence, should consider including a measure of general intelligence in order to adjust for this potentially confounding factor.
述情障碍是一种人格特质，其最显著的特征是难以识别和表达情感。尽管述情障碍中的情感困难已得到充分证实，但迄今为止，很少有研究探讨其与更广泛的认知能力（如一般智力）之间的关系。在三个独立的健康成人样本（样本量分别为389、318和273）中，我们研究了述情障碍是否与一般智力相关。在所有三个样本中，我们都观察到述情障碍与一般智力之间存在显著的负相关。在其中两个样本中，即使考虑了面部情绪识别能力和超模态情绪识别能力测试（通过面部、身体和声音进行测量）的表现，一般智力仍是述情障碍的显著预测因素。从理论角度来看，这些结果表明，述情障碍模型需要纳入更广义认知功能的作用。从实践角度来看，研究述情障碍与临床疾病之间的联系时，其中许多疾病已知与一般智力有关，应该考虑纳入一般智力测量，以便调整这个潜在的混杂因素。
