Journal article
The association between communication impairments and acquired alexithymia in chronic stroke patients
- Abstract:
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Introduction
Language dysfunction has recently been suggested to be one route to alexithymia, an impairment in recognizing and communicating one’s own emotions. Neuropsychological evidence is needed to investigate the possibility that acquired language problems could underlie acquired alexithymia.
Method This project examined data from a large group of chronic stroke patients (N = 118) to test whether self-reported or behavioral measures of language and communication problems were associated with alexithymia. We also examined the impact of hemisphere of damage on alexithymia.
Results We found no differences in alexithymia levels for patients with observed language impairments on brief tests of picture naming, comprehension, and reading vs unimpaired patients. However, self-reported communication difficulties were found to be associated with higher scores of alexithymia, even after controlling for depression and anxiety. Patients with left- versus right-hemisphere damage did not differ in their alexithymia scores.
Conclusions We found partial support for the language hypothesis of alexithymia. We discuss potential reasons for the discrepant findings between the self-report and objective language measures and suggest that self-report measures may be more sensitive to milder, more pragmatic language impairments, as opposed to the severe structural language impairments measured by the cognitive screening tests.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Accepted manuscript, 266.7KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1080/13803395.2020.1770703
Authors
- Publisher:
- Routledge
- Journal:
- Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology More from this journal
- Volume:
- 42
- Issue:
- 5
- Pages:
- 495-504
- Publication date:
- 2020-06-23
- Acceptance date:
- 2020-05-11
- DOI:
- ISSN:
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1380-3395
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1103941
- Local pid:
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pubs:1103941
- Deposit date:
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2020-05-11
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Informa UK Limited
- Copyright date:
- 2020
- Rights statement:
- © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
- Notes:
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This is the accepted manuscript version of the article. The final version is available from Taylor and Francis at https://doi.org/10.1080/13803395.2020.1770703
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