Translational Neuroscience, Institute of Medical Sciences.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2021 May;150(5):930-942. doi: 10.1037/xge0000784. Epub 2020 Oct 1.
People vary in their self-awareness of their own emotions, and this may predict psychological well-being. Evidence suggests that emotional self-awareness is diminished in autism, but these findings may be biased by self-report or confounded by verbal intelligence. To address this issue, we developed the emotional consistency (EC) task, measuring emotional self-awareness through consistency in emotional decision-making. In the EC-Task, we showed participants pairs of emotional images, asking them to judge which evoked the more intense emotional experience. The logical consistency of decision making, based on transitive relationships between stimuli, reflects precision of judgment of experience of emotional intensity, which in turn reflects emotional self-awareness. Emotional consistency significantly correlated with lower self-reported alexithymia but not autistic traits. Instead, autistic traits predicted greater discrepancy between EC-Task performance and self-reported difficulties identifying feelings. Participants with higher autistic traits were more likely to underestimate their emotional self-awareness, possibly because of greater metacognitive difficulties and negative self-beliefs. Our study suggests emotional self-awareness is not diminished in autism and provides a novel method to investigate this issue. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
人们在自我感知情绪方面存在差异,而这可能预示着心理健康。有证据表明,自闭症患者的情绪自我意识会减弱,但这些发现可能受到自我报告的偏差或语言智力的干扰。为了解决这个问题,我们开发了情绪一致性(EC)任务,通过情绪决策的一致性来衡量情绪自我意识。在 EC 任务中,我们向参与者展示了一对情绪图像,要求他们判断哪一个引起了更强烈的情绪体验。基于刺激之间的传递关系,决策的逻辑一致性反映了对情绪强度体验判断的精确性,而这反过来又反映了情绪自我意识。情绪一致性与较低的自我报告的述情障碍显著相关,但与自闭症特征无关。相反,自闭症特征预测了 EC 任务表现与自我报告的识别困难之间更大的差异。具有较高自闭症特征的参与者更有可能低估自己的情绪自我意识,这可能是由于更大的元认知困难和消极的自我信念。我们的研究表明,自闭症患者的情绪自我意识并没有减弱,并提供了一种新的方法来研究这个问题。(PsycInfo 数据库记录(c)2021 APA,保留所有权利)。