Reduced facial mimicry as a correlate of an impaired emotional interaction in alexithymia?

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Matthias Franz
• Subject Area: Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine ; Clinical Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Term: from 2017 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 334977469

Perception and communication of affective signals within social relations represent a crucial competence of a functional and adaptive regulation of interpersonal interaction. The term alexithymia refers to an impairment of this social ability. It covers the impairment (1) to recognize affective states in the self and in others, (2) to label these affective states as discrete feelings and (3) to communicate them on a linguistic level. As a normally distributed personality trait, alexithymia is associated with psychological symptom load. However, this construct is distinguishable from other psychological disorders (e.g. schizoid personality disorder, depression, autism). Up to now, the relationship between alexithymia and the ability to exchange affective states by facial expression and mimicry between interacting individuals has not been focused intensively. The main target of the planned study is to determine whether alexithymic persons (TAS sum score > 61) are less susceptible for emotional contagion triggered by naturalistic facial affect expression compared to non alexithymic controls. The main dependent variable is the subjects own facial mimicry in response to dynamically presented affect expressive faces (anger, grief, anxiety, disgust, joy) of preschool children and adults. Therefore, the facial mimicry is operationalized as facial EMG activity (fEMG) of the m. corrugator and m. zygomaticus within a timeframe of 3 seconds after stimulus onset. In the experimental procedure, video sequences of facial affect expressions, validated in pilot studies, will be presented. Each video sequence starts with a neutral facial expression followed by an affect presentation dynamically increasing to the maximal affect expression. It is assumed that alexithymic subjects who are exposed to video sequences of dynamic facial affect expressions will show in general a decreased fEMG response compared to the control group (main effect Group). Due to the evolutionary significance of the Kindchenschema it is further assumed that the presentation of affect expressive mimicry of infantile faces induces a stronger fEMG response compared to adult faces even in alexithymic subjects (main effect Kindchenschema). These assumptions will be investigated within variance analytic models. An impaired facial mimicry within face to face interaction, especially in alexithymic persons, could represent a social stressor but also a target for psychotherapeutic approaches. This association may contribute to innovative perspectives in the development of new treatments and preventive approaches. Therapeutic focusing and promoting mimic responsitivity and the associated self-awareness could be a promising starting point improving socioemotional abilities of alexithymic individuals. This could also have a positive effect on the psychosomatic symptom load associated with alexithymic impairment.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants