Abstract: Alexithymic patients suffer from severe deficits in cognitive processing and regulation of emotions. The purpose of present study was to explore the emotion schemas of high-alexithymics. Based on Bucci’s multiple code theory (1997), our hypothesis was compared with low-alexithymics, high-alexithymics had deficits in verbal emotion schemas, symbolic imagery and referential links that connected verbal and nonverbal schemas.
The participants were 20 high-alexithymics and 20 low-alexithymics selected according to scores of TAS-20 (Toronto Alexithymia Scale). Emotion words and emotion pictures were used as experimental materials. Mixed designs were adopted. In experiment 1 and 2, participants needed to judge whether each word or picture presented through computer was positive or negative by pressing “F” for “positive” or “J” for “negative”. In experiment 3, participants needed to judge whether the valence of each picture-word match presented through computer was consistent or inconsistent by pressing “F” for “consistent” or “J” for “inconsistent”.
Repeated-measure analysis of variance showed that Low-alexithymics were significantly faster on valence-judging emotion words than high-alexithymics. All of dimensions of alexithymia were positive correlated with mean response latencies for emotion words. But there was no significant difference between high-alexithymics and low-alexithymics on valence-judging emotion pictures. Finally high-alexithymics responded significantly slower on linkage between nonverbal and verbal schemas of emotion than low-alexithymics. Their subjectively-reported task difficulty was highly correlated with mean latencies for linkage response.
To sum up, we demonstrated that high-alexithymics have deficits in emotion verbal schemas but not nonverbal schemas based on pictures. They also have severe deficiencies in referential links between nonverbal and verbal schemas of emotion

Key words: alexithymia, emotion verbal schemas, emotion imagery, referential links