A Study On Deficits In The Processing Of Affective Information In Alexithymics

In terms of the theory of affective information process, 30 alexithymic subjects and 30 normal subjects were tested with affective priming paradigm to compare their differences between stages of subliminal automatic processing and liminal control processing. For the subliminal process, the presentation time of priming stimuli was 10ms, the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) were 0ms,150ms,300ms; for the control processing involving conscious expectation, SOA were the same, priming stimuli appeared 250ms. The results showed that:(1)there was a prominent priming effect only in normal subjects, but no effects in alexithymics in the subliminally automatic process. Moreover, normal subjects spent longer time in an evaluative judgement for the congruent positive prime-target pairs. However, it took alexithymics more time for those congruent negative pairs. (2) In the liminal control processing stage, under the condition of 0ms and 300ms SOA, alexithymic group spent significant longer time to make decision compared with normal ones, though they also have expectation effect. In conclusion, alexithymics might have deficits not only in subliminal automatic process , but also in reorganization of mental schemata.