DOI:10.6129/CJP.202209_64(3).0001
中華心理學刊 民 111，64 卷，3 期，263-278
Chinese Journal of Psychology 2022, Vol.64, No.3, 263-278

Shu-Hui Lee(Center for General Education, National Tsing Hua University; Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Tsing Hua University)；Chia-Ho Lai(Department of Psychology, New York University)

Abstract

Although the role of emotional processing is emphasized in contemporary models of information processing, emotional influence has not been examined implicitly for controlled processing of verbal comprehension in Taiwanese alexithymics. Thus, the current study examines the role of emotional influence on semantic processing for Taiwanese alexithymics in an emotional semantic judgment task. Emotion valence (positive, negative, and neutral) and association strength (strong, weak) were independently varied to study emotional semantic processing. Participants were asked to decide whether two sequentially presented Chinese emotional words were related in meaning. This study identified two main results. First, compared to individuals with low alexithymia, individuals with high alexithymia demonstrated facilitation effects for emotion words during weak association. Second, these facilitation effects were closely related to their alexithymia traits. In the present study, individuals with alexithymia displayed increased activation of sensitivity to emotional stimuli at the early stage of information processing, which enabled quick responses during semantic judgment.

Keywords: alexithymia, association strength, emotion, semanti