Alexithymia in juvenile primary headache sufferers: a pilot study

Starting in the 1990s, there has been accumulating evidence of alexithymic characteristics in adult patients with primary headache. Little research has been conducted, however, on the relationship between alexithymia and primary headache in developmental age. In their research on alexithymia in the formative years, the authors identified one of the most promising prospects for research, as discussed here. The aim of this study was to verify whether there is: (a) a link between tension-type headache and alexithymia in childhood and early adolescence; and (b) a correlation between alexithymia in children/preadolescents and their mothers. This study was based on an experimental group of 32 patients (26 females and 6 males, aged from 8 to 15 years, mean 11.2 ± 2.0) suffering from tension-type headache and 32 control subjects (26 females and 6 males, aged from 8 to 15 years, mean 11.8 ± 1.6). Tension-type headache was diagnosed by applying the International Headache Classification (ICHD-II, 2004). The alexithymic construct was measured using an Italian version of the Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children in the case of the juvenile patients and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) for their mothers. Higher rates of alexithymia were observed in the children/preadolescents in the experimental group (EG) than in the control group; in the EG there was no significant correlation between the alexithymia rates in the children/preadolescents and in their mothers

Dimenticanza intenzionale, memorie traumatiche e psicopatologia: il contenuto emozionale degli stimoli influenza il directed forgetting?

The directed forgetting is an adaptive mechanism aimed at helping the individual to deal with psychological conflicts, anxiety and pain.The individual shows the ability to intentionally forget and to exclude from consciuosness stressful events, traumatic experiences or particularly unpleasant material. The basis of this ability has been postulated in the intervention of executive control of memory mechanisms that inhibit unwanted memories, exempting them from awareness. The aim of the present research was to investigate: a) the directed forgetting effect for verbal stimuli; b) the influence of emotional content of stimuli on the directed forgetting effect; c) the relationship between subjective disease of the participant and the directed forgetting phenomenon. Forty-one subjects with no history of specific pathologies, participated to the experiment. They were divided into two groups: half participants were randomly assigned to the condition \u201cto forget\u201d and the remaining were assigned to the condition \u201cto remember\u201d. In the present study it was possible to observe only one of the three effects typically seen in the directed forgetting procedure. Infact, data have showed a greater final recall number of words of the list 2 items compared to List 1 items in the forgetting condition. No significant data were observed for the other findings typically seen in the directed forgetting procedure. Subjects in the forget condition didn\u2019t show a deficit in the List 1 final recall compared to subjects in the remember condition (costs) and subjects in the forget conditions didn\u2019t recall more List 2 items than do individuals in the remember condition (benefits). Moreover, in the current study, the directed forgetting task would not seem to be influenced by the emotional content of words

Alexithymia, Verbal Ability and Emotion Recognition

Although previous studies seem to indicate that alexithymic individuals have a deficit in their ability to recognize emotional stimuli, none had studied the relationship between alexithymia and verbal and non verbal abilities and their possible role in emotion recognition. The aim of the present study is to further investigate the relationship between alexithymia and emotion recognition ability. In particular we studied whether this relationship is mediated by verbal ability. Thirty-five students were selected from a group of 91 University students previously screened for alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale;TAS-20). Participants were shown black and white slides depicting facial expression of the following emotions: anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, happiness and fear. Compared to low alexithymic participants, and, more importantly, taking verbal IQ into account, high alexithymic and low alexithymic participants did not differ in emotion recognition