Dipartimento di Scienze Cognitive, Psicologiche, Pedagogiche e degli studi culturali, Università di Messina, Messina, Italy.
ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy.
PLoS One. 2023 Jan 23;18(1):e0278881. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0278881. eCollection 2023.
Evidence suggests that incidental modulation of affective states affects the ability to keep track of time. Alexithymia represents an ideal condition to further address the emotion-time processing link, as it refers to a trait characterized by a deficit of affective processing. 31 healthy participants completed an online version of the TAS-20 scale, which measures alexithymia, and a time reproduction task of visual stimuli related to positive (i.e., happiness) and negative (i.e., anger) facial expressions. Results documented a positive correlation between TAS-20 score and the variability in reproducing sub-second durations of the anger expression stimuli We also found an overestimation of sub-second durations of non-affective expressions in borderline/alexithymic participants. Finally, in line with the literature, we confirmed the overall tendency to overestimate the duration of anger expression stimuli. These findings, which can be interpreted in terms of abnormal scalar timing property in alexithymia, expand previous investigations linking this personality trait with abnormal processing of negative emotions. The evidence that alexithymia predicts the reproduction variability of sub-second durations of negative affective stimuli corroborates previous neuroimaging studies documenting cerebellar deficits in these individuals.
有证据表明，偶然调节情绪状态会影响跟踪时间的能力。述情障碍是进一步探讨情绪-时间加工联系的理想条件，因为它指的是一种以情感加工缺陷为特征的特质。31 名健康参与者完成了 TAS-20 量表的在线版本，该量表衡量述情障碍，以及与积极（即快乐）和消极（即愤怒）面部表情相关的视觉刺激的时间复制任务。结果记录了 TAS-20 分数与复制愤怒表情刺激的亚秒持续时间的可变性之间的正相关关系。我们还发现，边界/述情障碍参与者对非情感表达的亚秒持续时间存在高估。最后，与文献一致，我们证实了总体上高估愤怒表情刺激持续时间的趋势。这些发现可以用述情障碍中异常标度计时特性来解释，扩展了将这种人格特质与负面情绪异常处理联系起来的先前研究。述情障碍预测负性情感刺激亚秒持续时间的可重复性的证据，佐证了先前记录这些个体小脑缺陷的神经影像学研究。
