Alexithymia and cognitive bias for emotional information

The relationship between alexithymia (TAS-20) and cognitive bias (attentional bias and implicit memory bias) for illness words and negative emotion words (masked and unmasked) was investigated in a community sample of 120 individuals. Attentional bias was measured by the emotional Stroop task, and implicit memory bias was measured by a perceptual identification task. No significant correlation was found between alexthymia and any measure of cognitive bias. Group comparison between high-TAS and low-TAS scorers, however, showed that the high-TAS scorers were significantly slower on colour-naming unmasked illness words than unmasked negative emotion words.