Characteristics Of Alexithymia Subtype In Emotional Labeling:ERPs Study

Based on the attention-appraisal model,this study explored the behavior and ERP characteristics of individuals with alexithymia subtype during affect labeling.Emotional labeling refers to the use of words by individuals to describe the emotional characteristics of stimuli and events.It is a means of emotional regulation.Alexithymia is characterized by difficulty in identifying and describing emotions and extroverted thinking.On the one hand,it coincides with the recognition and naming of emotional stimuli on the task marked by emotions.On the other hand,alexithymia has a high co-morbidity with many diseases,but the research results of emotional labeling with special individuals as subjects are inconsistent,it is not clear what factors play a role in it;and recent studies have found that there are subtypes of alexithymia.A study of alexithymia can better explore what are the more common factors that influence emotional labeling.In this study,based on the attention evaluation model,cluster analysis was conducted on the alexithymia patients with over 61 points on the Toronto alexithymia scale(tas-20),and two typical subtypes--attention difficulty type and evaluation difficulty type were selected as the subjects.The normal individuals were used as the control group to complete the ERP experiment of emotion labeling.And emotional faces selected as experimental materials,the use of 3(subjects type: evaluation difficulty,attention difficulty and normal group)x 2(task types: emotion tagging,gender tagging)x 6(emotional types: happy,surprise,fear,sadness,anger,disgust)of mixed experimental design,the dependent variable indicators for P1 amplitude,LPP amplitude.The behavioral results showed that,in terms of accuracy,the main effect of the subjects' types was significant,and the results of multiple comparisons showed that,compared with the attention difficulty group and the normal group,the accuracy of the evaluation difficulty group in identifying six emotions was lower.In this study,according to the experimental Settings,the ERP results of emotion labeling were divided into two stages,the judgment stage and the reaction stage.The results showed that in the judgment stage,compared with the evaluation of the difficult and normal individuals,the amplitude of P1 wave induced by the attention difficult individuals was higher under six emotions,and the amplitude of P1 wave induced by fear emotions was higher in any type of individuals.In the reaction stage,LPP amplitude was lower in the normal group and the individuals with attention difficulty when emotional labeling was carried out,and the labeling type of the individuals with attention difficulty was not significant.The experimental results show that the avoidance of emotional faces by the attention difficulty type occurs in the early stage of attention and is not affected by the emotional type.There was no evaluation of the difficult and normal individuals.It is difficult to name emotions in the evaluation of individuals with difficulty,and it is impossible to suppress emotions through emotional labeling.The attention difficulty type does not have the difficulty of naming emotions,but can also suppress emotions through emotional labeling.