TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pollatos, Olga
A1  - Werner, Natalie S.
A1  - Duschek, Stefan
A1  - Schandry, Rainer
A1  - Matthias, Ellen
A1  - Traut-Mattausch, Eva
A1  - Herbert, Beate M.
T1  - Differential effects of alexithymia subscales on autonomic reactivity and anxiety during social stress
JF  - Journal of psychosomatic research
N2  - Objectives: Alexithymia is characterized by a difficulty in identifying and describing one's emotions. Recent research has associated differential effects of the alexithymia facets to hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis markers during stress. This study aimed to analyze how the facets of alexithymia interact with autonomic reactivity as well as self- and observer-rated anxiety during a social stress task. Methods: With the use of a public-speaking paradigm, skin conductance levels (SCLs) and heart rate (HR) during the defined periods of baseline, preparation, stress, and recovery were assessed in 60 volunteers (42 females, mean age 22.8) categorized as having either high (HDA) or low (LDA) degrees of alexithymia. Results: We found smaller SCLs during preparation and speech in the HDA group. Regression analyses indicated that only the alexithymia facet "difficulty in describing feelings" (DDF) was associated with smaller electrodermal responses. In the HDA group, self- and observer-rated anxiety was higher in the HDA than in the LDA group, which was attributable to higher scores in the subscales "difficulty in identifying feelings" (DIF) and "externally oriented thinking" (EOT). Conclusions: Our data support and specify the decoupling hypothesis of alexithymia by showing that the facets of alexithymia are differentially related to autonomic reactivity as well as self- and observer-rated anxiety during social stress.
KW  - Alexithymia
KW  - Autonomic response
KW  - Social stress
KW  - Skin conductance
KW  - Anxiety
KW  - Social performance
KW  - Decoupling hypothesis
Y1  - 2011
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2010.12.003
SN  - 0022-3999
VL  - 70
IS  - 6
SP  - 525
EP  - 533
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Matthias, Ellen
A1  - Schandry, R.
A1  - Duschek, S.
A1  - Pollatos, Olga
T1  - On the relationship between interoceptive awareness and the attentional processing of visual stimuli
N2  - Mental processes related to visceral activity have gained growing interest during the last few years. The following study is the first to investigate possible interactions between interoceptive awareness and measures of attentional performance. We tested the hypothesis whether interoceptive awareness is positively related to indices of selective and divided attentional performances. Using a heartbeat perception task, 29 healthy female participants were separated into two groups scoring either high or low in an interoceptive awareness task. Attentional performance was assessed by several tests including the 'd2 test of attention' and subtests from the 'TAP: Test Battery for Attentional Performance'. We observed a significantly better performance in selective and divided attention for participants with high interoceptive awareness. Our data suggests that interoceptive awareness is related to a better performance especially in tasks assessing selective and divided attention. We conclude 1) that perception of bodily states might be a crucial determinant for the processing of external, visual stimuli, 2) that the ability to perceive internal signals might be an indicator of self-focused attention, and 3) that bodily signals may use, at least in part, similar processing resources as signals from the attention system.
Y1  - 2009
SN  - 0167-8760
ER  -