Deficit in speech development at the age of five years predicts alexithymia in late adolescent males
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective Assessment of the etiology of alexithymia is in most studies hindered by recall bias. The aim of the present study was to assess the significance of individual developmental factors at the age of five years for alexithymia in late adolescence. By using data from a child welfare centre check-up at the age of five years, it was possible to avoid recall bias. Methods The sample consisted of 723 subjects, who were comprehensively examined at the age of five years at a child welfare centre where their state of health, verbal, gross motor, visuo-motor, socio-emotional, and cognitive development were assessed. In late adolescence (mean age 19 years) their alexithymic features were measured using the 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Results In females, none of the developmental factors remained associated with later alexithymic features in the multivariate analyses. However, in males, emphasis on the variables measuring speech development was important. In particular, a variable measuring the ability to comply with multi-part instructions was strongly related with alexithymic features in late adolescence. Conclusion The results suggest speech development is a significant factor in the developmental process of alexithymia, at least in males. It is possible that children who have impaired language skills and therefore struggle in social situations have a higher risk of developing alexithymia. This emphasizes the need for further research, to assess how the inadequate speech development predisposes to the emergence of alexithymic features and whether it is a gender-specific phenomenon.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".