Selective impairment of decision making under ambiguity in alexithymia

Alexithymia is characterised by difficulties identifying and describing emotions. Few studies have investigated how alexithymia influences decision-making under different conditions (ambiguity and risk). This study aimed to examine whether alexithymia contributes to impairment in decision-making. Th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:BMC psychiatry 2017-11, Vol.17 (1), p.378-378, Article 378
Main Authors: Zhang, Lei, Wang, Xue, Zhu, Yu, Li, Hongchen, Zhu, Chunyan, Yu, Fengqiong, Wang, Kai
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Affective Symptoms - psychology
Alexithymia
Ambiguity
Analysis
Asian Continental Ancestry Group - psychology
Care and treatment
Case-Control Studies
China
Comparative analysis
Decision Making
Diagnosis
Female
Gambling - psychology
Humans
Male
Risk
Risk-Taking
TAS-20
Task Performance and Analysis
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Summary:Alexithymia is characterised by difficulties identifying and describing emotions. Few studies have investigated how alexithymia influences decision-making under different conditions (ambiguity and risk). This study aimed to examine whether alexithymia contributes to impairment in decision-making. This study included 42 participants with high scores in the Chinese version of Toronto Alexithymia Scale (alexithymia group), and 44 matched subjects with low scores (control group). Decision-making was measured using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Game of Dice Task (GDT). The main findings of this study revealed selective deficits in IGT performance for the alexithymia group, while GDT performance was unimpaired when compared with the control group. In IGT, total netscores were lower for the alexithymia group compared to the control group, particularly with regard to block 5. Moreover, the alexithymia individuals selected significantly more adverse cards than the controls, indicating significant decision-making impairments. Alexithymia selectively influences decision-making under ambiguity.
ISSN:1471-244X
1471-244X
DOI:10.1186/s12888-017-1537-2