Eliciting Expressions of Emotion: An Exploratory Analysis of Alexithymia in Adults with Autism Utilising the APRQ.
Christian Ryan, Stephen Cogan
PMID 35394243WHAT IT FOUND
Adults with autism used fewer emotion words when describing hypothetical scenarios than neurotypical adults, even when their self-reported alexithymia scores were low.
This suggests standard questionnaires may miss emotional expression difficulties in autism.
Key findings
01Participants with autism used significantly fewer affective words overall than neurotypical participants, a difference strongly correlated with autism traits but not with self-reported alexithymia scores.
02The reduction in emotional language was specific to emotion words; participants with autism actually used a wider range of distinct non-emotional words than the neurotypical group.
03Adding counts of emotional and non-emotional words to a logistic regression model improved the accuracy of distinguishing between the autism and neurotypical groups compared to using self-report scores alone.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was exploratory and cross-sectional, meaning it describes differences at one point in time rather than proving a causal link. The sample size was relatively small (32 in each group). The interview tool (APRQ) focused heavily on negative emotions (anger, fear, sadness) and had very few positive scenarios, which limits conclusions about positive emotional expression. The analysis used a 'bag-of-words' approach, which counts words but does not analyse the context or grammar (e.g., who is feeling the emotion), potentially missing nuances in how emotions are attributed.
Declared interests
The study was funded by University College Cork. The authors did not report any conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that autistic adults with low scores on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) have typical emotional expression. This study found that many participants with autism used fewer emotion words despite not scoring high for alexithymia on the questionnaire, suggesting the self-report tool may miss these difficulties.