Alexithymia and Facial Mimicry in Response to Infant and Adult Affect-Expressive Faces.

Marc A Nordmann,Tobias Müller,Ralf Schäfer,Matthias Franz

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.635648

Abstract

Facial mimicry is the automatic tendency to imitate facial expressions of emotions. Alexithymia is associated with a reduced facial mimicry ability to affect expressions of adults. There is evidence that the baby schema may influence this process. In this study it was tested experimentally whether facial mimicry of the alexithymic group (AG) is different from the control group (CG) in response to dynamic facial affect expressions of children and adults. A multi-method approach (20-point Toronto Alexithymia Scale and Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia) was used for assessing levels of alexithymia. From 3503 initial data sets, two groups of 38 high and low alexithymic individuals without relevant mental or physical diseases were matched regarding age, gender, and education. Facial mimicry was induced by presentation of naturalistic affect-expressive video sequences (fear, sadness, disgust, anger, and joy) taken from validated sets of faces from adults (Averaged Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces) and children (Picture-Set of Young Children’s Affective Facial Expressions). The videos started with a neutral face and reached maximum affect expression within 2 s. The responses of the groups were measured by facial electromyographic activity (fEMG) of corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major muscles. Differences in fEMG response (4000 ms) were tested in a variance analytical model. There was one significant main effect for the factor emotion and four interaction effects for the factors group × age, muscle × age, muscle × emotion, and for the triple interaction muscle × age × emotion. The participants of AG showed a decreased fEMG activity in response to the presented faces of adults compared to the CG but not for the faces of children. The affect-expressive faces of children induced enhanced zygomatic and reduced corrugator muscle activity in both groups. Despite existing deficits in the facial mimicry of alexithymic persons, affect-expressive faces of children seem to trigger a stronger positive emotional involvement even in the AG.

Highlights

The dimensional construct of alexithymia consist of four facets: (1) difficulty in identifying feelings and distinguishing between emotional feelings and the physical sensations of emotional arousal, (2) difficulty in finding words to describe feelings to other persons, (3) limited imaginative processes, and (4) an external oriented thinking style (Bagby et al, 2020)
This study investigates facial mimicry of mentally healthy persons with high and low alexithymia, based on facial electromyographic activity (fEMG) activity of the corrugator and zygomatic muscle in response to the presentation of video sequences with dynamically animated facial affect expressions of children and adults according to five basic affects
500 ms after stimulus onset, parallel to the increasing facial expression of affect, an increasing fEMG activity that reaches its maximum after 2000 ms, corresponding to the apex in the videos, could be observed

Summary

Introduction

The dimensional construct of alexithymia consist of four facets: (1) difficulty in identifying feelings and distinguishing between emotional feelings and the physical sensations of emotional arousal, (2) difficulty in finding words to describe feelings to other persons, (3) limited imaginative processes, and (4) an external oriented thinking style (Bagby et al, 2020). Alexithymia and Facial Mimicry of affect processing has been investigated in epidemiological (Franz et al, 2008), clinical, and psychophysiological studies (Taylor and Bagby, 2013) Such studies have found a limited ability for empathy in alexithymic individuals as well as an impaired emotional awareness, with conceivable adverse consequences for social interaction and health (Kealy et al, 2018). Thereby the affective state of the infant is passively perceived by healthy attachment figures, but is intuitively sympathized, involuntarily imitated, and shared with the infant (Franz and Schäfer, 2009) This process takes place in an affect modifying manner (Fonagy et al, 2018), whereby the infant is encouraged in its development not to regard the imitated affects as those of the reference person, but to perceive them as a reflection of its own. Parents with symptoms of depression were linked to more neutral affect during face-to-face interactions with their infant (Aktar et al, 2017)

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Conclusion