College undergraduates were identified as alexithymic
or control, based on their scores on the Toronto Alexithymia
Scale (TAS; Taylor, Ryan, & Bagby, 1985). All subjects
were presented standardized emotion-eliciting color slides
for 6 s while facial muscle, heart rate, and skin conductance
activity were recorded. Stimuli were presented a second
time while subjects were asked to provide emotion self-reports
using a paper-and-pencil version of the Self-Assessment
Manikin (SAM; Lang, 1980) and to generate a list of words
describing their emotional reaction to each slide. Consistent
with the definition of alexithymia as a syndrome characterized,
in part, by a deficit in the identification of emotion
states, high TAS subjects supplied fewer emotion-related
words than did controls to describe their response to the
slides. Alexithymics also indicated less variation along
the arousal dimension of the SAM, produced fewer specific
skin conductance responses and showed less heart rate deceleration
to the slides, regardless of category. No valence-related
differences between alexithymic and control subjects were
noted.