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The emotionally intelligent building
Published in Edward Finch, Guillermo Aranda-Mena, Creating Emotionally Intelligent Workspaces, 2019
Edward Finch, Guillermo Aranda-Mena
There’s a medical condition that was identified in the middle of the last century. The condition is known as alexithymia. Whilst it may be little-known, it is suffered by 10 per cent of the population (Ruesch 1948, Maclean 1949). People suffering with alexithymia have difficulties identifying and describing their own emotions. Specifically, they have difficulties in regard to emotional awareness, social attachment and interpersonal relating. This difficulty in distinguishing and appreciating the emotions of others often leads to unempathetic and ineffective emotional responses in social settings. Perhaps you might recognise some of these characteristics in colleagues. We might say “He has sharp elbows” or “He leaves dead bodies in his path.” However, we rarely see emotional shortcomings in ourselves. Emotional intelligence takes a different approach. Rather than ‘fixing’ a known mental condition, it considers the competence of the general population. It embraces the concept of positive psychology and the possibilities of enhancing our own emotional awareness.
Autism, Attachment, and Alexithymia: Investigating Emoji Comprehension
Published in International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 2022
Hannah Taylor, Christopher J. Hand, Hannah Howman, Ruth Filik
Importantly, a limited number of studies investigating facial expression recognition in ASD acknowledge the significance of the Alexithymia Hypothesis of ASD (Bird & Cook, 2013). While emotion recognition difficulties are common in ASD, not all individuals struggle (Loth et al., 2018), suggesting the disorder may not be causal of them. Characterized by difficulties in identifying emotional arousal and feelings (Nemiah et al., 1976), alexithymia is present in approximately 50% of autistic individuals (Bird & Cook, 2013), as opposed to 10% of the general population (Salminen et al., 1999). Several studies indicate that the association between ASD and poor facial expression recognition is mediated by co-occurring alexithymia (Bothe et al., 2019; Cook et al., 2013; Kätsyri et al., 2008). It is therefore vital to consider the concomitant effect of alexithymia when investigating the recognition of emojis representing facial emotion expressions in relation to ASD.