Measuring the effects of alexithymia on perception of emotional vocalizations in autistic spectrum disorder and typical development

Abstract

Higher levels of alexithymia in the ASD group accounted for some, but not all, of the group difference in emotion recognition ability. However, alexithymia was insufficient to explain the different sensitivities of the two groups to the effects of psycho-acoustic complexity on performance. The results showing strong associations between emotion recognition and alexithymia scores in controls suggest a potential explanation for variability in emotion recognition in non-clinical populations.