Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: The present investigation sought to elucidate whether the capacity to decenter (i.e., create healthy distance from emotional stimuli) via implicit and explicit instruction was associated with alexithymia (i.e., inability to identify and distinguish between emotions), as assessed with a commonly used self-report measure, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20).The overall hypothesis of the current study was that individuals with intact abilities to identify and distinguish emotions, assessed via the TAS-20 (i.e., high emotional clarity), would evidence greater abilities to decenter when completing objective behavioral measures of implicit and explicit decentering.The logic leading to this hypothesis was that an individual must first identify and distinguish between their emotions before being able to step back and decenter from that emotion.Participants completed the TAS-20 as a measure of emotional clarity and were subjected to two objective tasks measuring decentering: the first task was an implicit measure in which participants viewed images of objects and decided whether or not each object would fit inside of the palm of their hand or inside a shoebox, and the second task was an explicit measure in which participants either imagined scenes remaining as they had seen it, or imagined receding in size to that of a postage stamp.Results revealed that measures of decentering did not vary as a function of TAS-20 scores.Only one subscale of the TAS-20, TAS-DIF, showed a significant interaction with valence on reaction time.It can be concluded that emotional clarity may not serve to predict one's ability to decenter.
Author: Kala Phillips
Institution: Kent State University
Language: English
Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2115110700