Alexithymia and verbal representations of the other: what can SCORS coding of TAT narratives tell us?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The concept of alexithymia originated in psychosomatic medicine and refers to problems in experiencing and regulating affects. Nowadays, alexithymia is defined as consisting of four dimensions: (1) difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal, (2) difficulty describing feelings to other people, (3) constricted imaginal processes, and (4) a stimulus-bound, externally orientated style (Taylor, Bagby, & Parker, 1997). In this study the relation between alexithymia and social cognitions and object relations will be addressed. More specifically we hypothesize that alexithymia will be related to lower scores on the following subscales of the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (SCORS): (a) complexity of representations, (b) emotional investment in relationships and (c) social causality of thematic apperception test (TAT) narratives. From the onset of the development of the alexithymia construct, the lack of investment in relationships is described as typical for alexithymic patients. These individuals with a poor representational life are described as ‘operational’ in their thinking and living; their mental life is strongly limited to the actual and the factual. The connection between alexithymia and interpersonal functioning is also found in empirical studies. It can be hypothesized that alexithymic patients have problems in the ability by which people ‘read’ and understand the minds of others, such that their actions can be framed as meaningful and predictable. In order to further investigate the relation between alexithymia and representations of others, the correlations between scores of 49 psychiatric inpatients on self-report and interview based measures of alexithymia and scores on the SCORS were calculated. Alexithymia was measured using the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) being the most widely used self-report measure for alexithymia and with the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA). The SCORS is a coding system, designed to be used on narrative material (e.g. TAT narratives) consisting of five clinician-rated scales that assess affective and cognitive aspects of an individual’s object relations and social cognitions. The scales are: complexity of representations, affective quality of representations, emotional investment in relationships, emotional investment in values and moral standards and understanding of social causality. Two trained independent raters scored the TAT-narratives. No significant relations between the TAS-20, it’s subscales and the SCORS subscales were found. Regarding the TSIA we found significant relations between the DIF and DDF scales and complexity of representations and social causality. A significant correlation between the TSIA total score and complexity was found as well. Results point out that the TAS-20 shows no theoretically consistent relations with external variables. With regard to the TSIA however, results seem to indicate that there is a link between alexithymia (especially problems in identifying and describing one’s own internal affective states) and the more cognitive aspects of object relations or mentalization about the other. Limitations of the study are indicated. Future research should clarify relations between different measurement methods of alexithymia and theoretically assumed relations with external variables.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.031 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".