The Dutch Language Version of the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia: Reliability, Factor Structure and Concurrent Validity

Ruth Inslegers,Els Ooms,Mattias Desmet,Reitske Meganck,Stijn Vanheule,Graeme J Taylor,R Michael Bagby,Filip De Fruyt

doi:10.5334/pb-53-1-93

Abstract

Psychologica Belgica is the official journal of the Belgian Association for Psychological Sciences (BAPS). BAPS promotes the development of psychological sciences in Belgium, at both fundamental and applied research levels. The journal ensures rigorous peer-review to maintain research integrity.Psychological Belgica makes publications available online as soon as they are finalised. All publications are open access, making research available free of charge and without delay.The journal has a 2021 Impact Factor of 1.717 and a 5 year impact factor of 2.352.Subscribe to content alerts and other journal news here. You can also follow the journal on ResearchGate.

Highlights

The alexithymia construct was formulated by Nemiah and Sifneos (1970; see Nemiah, Freyberger, & Sifneos, 1976) on the basis of clinical observations on patients with classic psychosomatic diseases
As with these other versions of the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA), the testing and comparison of multiple confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models revealed that the non-hierarchical four-factor model and the hierarchical four-factor model with four lower order factors nested within two higher order factors provided the best fit
As stated in the studies by Bagby and colleagues (2006) and Grabe and colleagues (2009), this hierarchical four-factor model proved to be most consistent with Nemiah and Sifneos’s (1970; see Nemiah et al, 1976) formulation that the alexithymia construct is comprised of deficits in affect awareness and an operative thinking style

Summary

Introduction

The alexithymia construct was formulated by Nemiah and Sifneos (1970; see Nemiah, Freyberger, & Sifneos, 1976) on the basis of clinical observations on patients with classic psychosomatic diseases Many of these patients manifested “a striking incapacity for the verbal description and expression of feelings”, and their associations and thoughts referred “to external events and actions rather than to internal fantasies” In most studies alexithymia was measured with the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20; Bagby, Parker, & Taylor, 1994; Bagby, Taylor, & Parker, 1994). This self-report scale assesses three salient facets of the alexithymia construct: difficulty identifying feelings (DIF), difficulty describing feelings to others (DDF), and externally oriented thinking (EOT). Several studies have demonstrated relative stability of TAS-20 scores, even though the scores may show some variation in response to negative affective states (e.g., Luminet, Bagby, & Taylor, 2001)

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Conclusion