Abstract
Alexithymia is defined as a limited ability in the cognitive processing of emotions. Literature suggested its negative influence on interpersonal relationship, documenting elevated alexithymia in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) compared to control groups. However, the study of alexithymia in school-age children with ASD remains largely unexplored as well as its effect on specific child socioemotional outcomes such as quality of attachment relationships. This study examines alexithymia and perceived attachment to parents in twenty-four children with ASD (without intellectual disability) and 24 typically developing (TD) children (mean age 10 years) using the self-reported Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children (AQC) and the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA). Measures of family SES as well as child intelligence were collected. Data revealed that ASD children showed higher levels of Alexithymia compared to TD group. In addition, 21% of participants with ASD exceed alexithymia categorical cut-off. By contrast, no difference emerged in the perception of attachment to parents. Moreover, alexithymia, but not ASD status, was found to predictive of child perception of attachment to parents. We observed no significant effect of child age and verbal IQ. Our findings showed that alexithymia was more common in children with ASD, whereas attachment was similar between groups. Difficulties in identifying and describing one’s own feelings may hinder the construction of a positive representation of parent-child attachment relationship regardless of child clinical status. Thus, alexithymia seems to play a key role on the way school-age children with and without ASD perceive their relationship with their parents.
Highlights
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by sociocommunicational impairments and restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviors and interests (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013)
Children with ASD did not differ from the typically developing (TD) group with respect to the control variables such as child age, verbal and non-verbal ability, and family Socioeconomic Status (SES)
By addressing the first study aim, there was a significant difference between the two groups on Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children (AQC) total score [t(45) = −2.36, p = 0.022, Partial eta squared = 0.111] with children of the ASD group showing a higher level of alexithymia
Summary
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by sociocommunicational impairments and restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviors and interests (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013). Alexithymia as well as ASD are associated with impaired mentalizing abilities (Moriguchi et al, 2006), possibly in light of the reduced integration between physiological states interoception and emotional consciousness (Gaigg et al, 2018) For these reasons, scholars suggest considering alexithymia as a significant predictor of developmental outcomes of individuals with ASD and a key concept to identifying cognitive profiles of specific subgroups within the ASD heterogeneity (Lai et al, 2013; Fietz et al, 2018). The study did not include a specific measure of attachment relationship to parents, which represents a core feature of child socioemotional development In this regard, literature on attachment showed no differences between ASD and their typical counterparts in the perception of quality of attachment to parents (Bauminger et al, 2010: Chandler and Dissanayake, 2014; Sivaratnam et al, 2018). In regard to our second aim, we expect to find a significant link between alexithymia and attachment according to literature on neurotypical population
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