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Memory For Emotionally Provocative Words In Alexithymia: A Role For Stimulus Relevance, Mitchell Meltzer, Kristy A. Nielson

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Alexithymia is associated with emotion processing deficits, particularly for negative emotional information. However, also common are a high prevalence of somatic symptoms and the perception of somatic sensations as distressing. Although little research has yet been conducted on memory in alexithymia, we hypothesized a paradoxical effect of alexithymia on memory. Specifically, recall of negative emotional words was expected to be reduced in alexithymia, while memory for illness words was expected to be enhanced in alexithymia.

Eighty-five high or low alexithymia participants viewed and rated arousing illness-related ("pain"), emotionally positive ("thrill"), negative ("hatred"), and neutral words ("horse"). Recall was assessed 45 …