The effects of autism and alexithymia on physiological and verbal responsiveness to music

Mixed emotions: the contribution of alexithymia to the emotional symptoms of autism

It is widely accepted that autism is associated with disordered emotion processing and, in particular, with deficits of emotional reciprocity such as impaired emotion recognition and reduced empathy. However, a close examination of the literature reveals wide heterogeneity within the autistic population with respect to emotional competence. Here we argue that, where observed, emotional impairments are due to alexithymia-a condition that frequently co-occurs with autism-rather than a feature of autism per se. Alexithymia is a condition characterized by a reduced ability to identify and describe one's own emotion, but which results in reduced empathy and an impaired ability to recognize the emotions of others. We briefly review studies of emotion processing in alexithymia, and in autism, before describing a recent series of studies directly testing this 'alexithymia hypothesis'. If found to be correct, the alexithymia hypothesis has wide-reaching implications for the study of autism, and how we might best support subgroups of autistic individuals with, and without, accompanying alexithymia. Finally, we note the presence of elevated rates of alexithymia, and inconsistent reports of emotional impairments, in eating disorders, schizophrenia, substance abuse, Parkinson's Disease, multiple sclerosis and anxiety disorders. We speculate that examining the contribution of alexithymia to the emotional symptoms of these disorders may bear fruit in the same way that it is starting to do in autism.

Are emotion impairments unique to, universal, or specific in autism spectrum disorder? A comprehensive review

There is widespread belief that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are "emotionally detached" from others. This comprehensive review examines the empirical evidence for this assumption, addressing three critical questions: (1) Are emotion-processing impairments universal in ASD? (2) Are they specific, or can they be explained by deficits in other domains? (3) Is the emotion processing profile seen in ASD unique to these conditions? Upon review of the literature (over 200 studies), we conclude that: (1) emotion-processing impairments might not be universal in ASD, as suggested by variability across participants and across emotion-processing tasks; (2) emotion-processing impairments might not be specific to ASD, as domain-general processes appear to account for some of these impairments; and (3) the specific pattern of emotion-processing strengths and weaknesses observed in ASD, involving difficulties with processing social versus non-social, and complex versus simple emotional information (with impairments more consistently reported on implicit than explicit emotion-processing tasks), appears to be unique to ASD. The emotion-processing profile observed in ASD might be best understood as resulting from heterogeneous vulnerabilities in different components of an "emotional communication system" that, in typical development, emerges from the interplay between domain-general cognitive, social and affective processes.