The relationship between alexithymia levels and emotional and linguistic abilities in female adolescents

Abstract

The association between alexithymia, the difficulty in identifying, processing, and describing emotions, and linguistic competencies, particularly definitional skills, has received scant attention in research. The present study sought to investigate the bidirectional association between alexithymia and word-definition ability -a metalinguistic and metarepresentational form of explicit verbal competence- while also considering the contributions of emotional intelligence, conceptualised as implicit psychological dimensions. A sample of Italian female adolescents (N = 886; M age = 16.2 years) completed the Italian version of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS), a performance-based measure of emotional intelligence, and the Co.De. Scale, which evaluates the formal and content-related quality of definitions of primary and secondary emotion terms. We found an association between poorer word-definition performance and higher alexithymia scores, but also a unique negative relationship with the externally oriented thinking component. Preliminary evidence indicates the existence of a metalanguage/meta representative deficit as levels of alexithymia increase. The results highlight the value of assessing and strengthening definitional competence in emotional language as an early indicator of alexithymia risk and as a foundation for preventive and clinical interventions amongst adolescents.