Study On The Meta-emotional Characteristics Of Alexithymia

Due to the emotional experience and expression ability has obvious shortcomings,alexithymia showed the stereotype and social adaptation ability is weak,the lack of facial expression,interpersonal indifference and other symptoms,serious impact on the individual's physical and mental health.Meta-emotion includes feelings and thoughts about emotions,is regarded as the core of emotional intelligence.Meta-emotional ability can be used as a yardstick to measure individual's emotional processing ability.Alexithymia may be insufficient in the meta-emotion ability,so this study explores the characteristics of alexithymia's meta-emotion.In the first part of the study,a questionnaire survey of 150 college students in Xinyang Normal University was conducted through the adoption of using the Chinese version of the TAS-20 and Meta-Emotion Questionnaire of the college students,in order to understand their degree of alexithymia and meta-emotional ability and the relationship between them.The results show that:the subjects were presented with approximate normal distribution in TAS-20 scores;the subjects were presented with approximate normal distribution in Meta-Emotion Questionnaire;there is significant negative correlation between alexithymia score and meta-emotion score(r=-0.42,p<0.01);the scores of all alexithymia dimentions and meta-emotion ability scores have significant negative correlation,the correlation coefficient is-0.29~-0.38;the scores of all meta-emotion dimentions and scores of alexithymia also have a significant negative correlation,the correlation coefficient is-0.24~-0.30;in addition,the scores of each dimension in alexithymia and the meta-emotion also have a certain degree of correlation.In the second study,to understand the difference in the correct rate of naming different emotions between the alexithymia group and non alexithymia group in the task of emotion recognition and the task of emotional self-awarenes by using behavior experiment,so as to explore the meta-emotional characteristics of alexithymia.By using the TAS-20 select 40 subjects(20 individual and 20 non individual alexithymia),with more than 61 points for alexithymia,less than 51 is divided into non alexithymia as a standard;select 60 standardized images of emotional faces,including 20 pictures of pleasure,20 pictures of sadness and 20 pictures of disgust.The experiment uses an emotional naming task,adopted a 2(alexithymia group and non alexithymia group)×2(the naming of specific emotions and emotional self awareness)×3(pleasure,sadness,disgust)three factor mixed experimental design.The results show that the correct rate of emotional naming has significant differences between the alexithymia group and non alexithymia group in emotion recognition task(t=4.50,p<0.001);the correct rate of emotional naming has significant differences between the alexithymia group and non alexithymia group in emotional self-awareness task(t=5.17,p<0.001).In the emotion recognition task,there is a significant negative correlation between the total correct rate of emotional naming and alexithymia scores,correlation coefficient(r=-0.51,p<0.01);In the emotional self-awareness naming task,there is a significant negative correlation between the total correct rate of emotional naming and alexithymia scores,correlation coefficient(r=-0.62,p<0.01).Conclusion: there is a significant negative correlation between alexithymia level and meta-emotion ability,alexithymia individual meta-mood ability lower than non alexithymia;the ability to identify different types of emotional faces are different form alexithymia,specific performance: happy>sadness>disgust;the meta-emotion ability were induced by different types of emotional faces are different form alexithymia,specific performance: happy>sadness>disgust;emotion recognition ability is higher than that of the meta-emotion ability in alexithymia.