Hobson, Hannah orcid.org/0000-0002-7952-475X and van den Bedem, Neeltje (2021) The Association between Parent and Child-Report Measures of Alexithymia in Children with and without Developmental Language Disorder. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH). 8309. ISSN 1660-4601
Abstract
Accurate measures of alexithymia, an inability to recognise and describe one’s own emotions, that are suitable for children are crucial for research into alexithymia’s development. However, previous research suggests that parent versus child reports of alexithymia do not correlate. Potentially, children may report on the awareness of their emotions, whereas parent-report measures may re-flect children’s verbal expression of emotion, which may be confounded by children’s communi-cative abilities, especially in conditions such as Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Given theoretical arguments that alexithymia may develop due to language impairments, further re-search into alexithymia in DLD is also needed. This project examined parent and child report measures of alexithymia in children with DLD (n = 106) and without DLD (n = 183), and their as-sociation to children’s communication skills. Parent and child reports were not significantly corre-lated in either group, and children with DLD had higher alexithymia scores on the parent-report measure only. Thus, parent and child measures of alexithymia likely reflect different constructs. Pragmatic language problems related to more parent-reported alexithymia, over and above group membership. Structural language abilities were unrelated to alexithymia. We suggest decreased social learning opportunities, rather than a language measure artefact, underlie increased alexi-thymic difficulties in DLD.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Sciences (York) > Psychology (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 18 Mar 2022 15:10 |
Last Modified: | 21 Jan 2025 17:55 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18168309 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/ijerph18168309 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:184953 |