Suslow Thomas, Kersting Anette, Bodenschatz Charlott Maria
Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University of Leipzig Medical Center, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2024 Aug 9;14(8):692. doi: 10.3390/bs14080692.
Alexithymia, a multifaceted personality construct, is known to be related to difficulties in the decoding of emotional facial expressions, especially in case of suboptimal stimuli. The present study investigated whether and which facets of alexithymia are related to impairments in the recognition of emotions in faces with face masks. Accuracy and speed of emotion recognition were examined in a block of faces with and a block of faces without face masks in a sample of 102 healthy individuals. The order of blocks varied between participants. Emotions were recognized better and faster in unmasked than in masked faces. Recognition performance was worst and slowest for participants starting the task with masked faces. In the whole sample, there were no correlations of alexithymia facets with accuracy and speed of emotion recognition for masked and unmasked faces. In participants starting the task with masked faces, the facet externally oriented thinking was positively correlated with reaction latencies of correct responses for masked faces. Our findings indicate that an externally oriented thinking style could be linked to a less efficient identification of emotions from faces wearing masks when task difficulty is high and support the utility of a facet approach in alexithymia research.
述情障碍是一种多维度的人格结构，已知它与情感面部表情解码困难有关，尤其是在刺激不太理想的情况下。本研究调查了述情障碍的哪些方面以及是否与识别戴口罩面孔的情绪障碍有关。在102名健康个体的样本中，对一组有口罩的面孔和一组没有口罩的面孔进行了情绪识别准确性和速度的检查。两组面孔呈现的顺序在参与者之间有所不同。未戴口罩的面孔比戴口罩的面孔的情绪识别更好、更快。对于从戴口罩的面孔开始任务的参与者来说，识别表现最差且最慢。在整个样本中，述情障碍各方面与戴口罩和未戴口罩面孔的情绪识别准确性和速度均无相关性。在从戴口罩的面孔开始任务的参与者中，外向性思维方面与戴口罩面孔正确反应的反应潜伏期呈正相关。我们的研究结果表明，当任务难度较高时，外向性思维方式可能与从戴口罩的面孔中识别情绪的效率较低有关，并支持在述情障碍研究中采用多方面方法的实用性。
