Language and Cognition Seminar - Dr Hannah Hobson

Alexithymia in acquired and developmental disorders of communication: the emerging picture 

Alexithymia is a difficulty recognising and communicating one's own affect. The underlying causes of alexithymia are unknown, but one hypothesis is that disruptions in language skills could play a key role. If this is the case, we would expect derailed emotional development and increased alexithymic traits in developmental disorders of communication and language (such as DLD and ASD), and an impact on developed emotional processes if the language system is disrupted later in life (such as in acquired brain injury). This talk will present a set of studies that have examined alexithymia in patients with traumatic brain injury, stroke survivors, ASD and DLD. Data from these different populations has not converged on a clear picture, but pragmatic language skills may be particularly related to alexithymia. Developmental disorders researchers will need to consider carefully the use of parent or child-report measures, as these two accounts appear weakly correlated.