Hiroki Nishimura|Gén Kobashi|Tetsuya Igarashi|Yoshiya Moriguchi|Sohei Kajiwara|Toru Akasaka
Validity issues in the assessment of alexithymia related to the developmental stages of emotional cognition and language
National Institute of Mental Health|National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry|National Institute of Mental Health|National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry|National Institute of Mental Health|National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry|National Institute of Mental Health|National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry|National Hospital Organization
examined developmental aspects emotional awareness adolescents evaluating responses selfreported questionnaire based toronto alexithymia scale20 tas20the items tas20 modified make understandable adolescents nine new items related limited capacity imagination added japanese linguistic ability test multidimensional empathy scale adolescents administered examine concurrent validity two hundred two normative young adolescents thirtytwo adolescent patients psychosomatic andor behavioral problems participated study eighty junior high school students also participated separate examination testretest reliabilitythirteen items extracted exploratory confirmatory factor analyses four core factors identified resulting scale difficulty identifying feelings dif difficulty describing feelings ddf externallyoriented thinking eot constricted imaginal capacities cic interestingly scores multidimensional empathy scale correlated positively dif ddf negatively eot cic higher ddf scores associated higher japanese linguistic abilities difddf scores higher females males irrespective linguistic ability testretest reliability coefficients significant patient group showed significantly higher dif scores normative studentsthe present findings indicated subjective difficulties identifying describing feelings associated empathetic linguistic abilities developmental aspect emotional awareness herein described suggests selfreported questionnaires alexithymia must carefully constructed examined even adults