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Alexithymia impairs the cognitive control of negative material while facilitating the recall of neutral material in both younger and older adults

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Dressaire, Déborah Stone, Charles Beason [UCL] Nielson, Kristy A. Guerdoux, Estelle Martin, Sophie Luminet, Olivier [UCL]

We investigated the moderating impact of the personality construct alexithymia on the ability of younger and older adults to control the recall of negative and neutral material. We conducted two experiments using the directed forgetting paradigm with younger and older adults. Participants studied negative (Experiment 1) or neutral (Experiment 2) words. Participants were instructed to forget the first half and remember the second half of an entire list of words. Overall, we found that alexithymia impairs the ability of both younger and older adults to cognitively control negative material (through both recall and inhibition). The “externally oriented thinking” factor of alexithymia appears to play a particularly pertinent role in terms of inhibiting negative material. Furthermore, older adults recalled fewer sought after negative items, but this was not evident in terms of inhibition. In contrast, only age (older adults) negatively impacted the recall of sought after neutral items. Interestingly, alexithymia had the opposite effect: the “difficulty in identifying emotions” factor of alexithymia was associated with an increased recall of neutral items. We discuss these results in terms of alexithymia and its impact on cognitive control.

Document type Article de périodique (Journal article) – Article de recherche
Access type Accès libre
Publication date 2015
Language Anglais
Journal information "Cognition and Emotion" - Vol. 29, no.3, p. 442-459 (2014)
Peer reviewed yes
Publisher Routledge ((United Kingdom) Abingdon)
issn 0269-9931
e-issn 1464-0600
Publication status Publié
Affiliation UCL - SSH/IPSY - Psychological Sciences Research Institute
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Bibliographic reference Dressaire, Déborah ; Stone, Charles Beason ; Nielson, Kristy A. ; Guerdoux, Estelle ; Martin, Sophie ; et. al. Alexithymia impairs the cognitive control of negative material while facilitating the recall of neutral material in both younger and older adults. In: Cognition and Emotion, Vol. 29, no.3, p. 442-459 (2014)
Permanent URL http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/168007