Subjective and Objective: Alexithymia and Social Cognition in Eating Disorders.

BACKGROUND: Emotional difficulties characterize eating disorders (ED). We examined the construct of alexithymia (disability to recognize and understand emotions) and neurocognitive factors of social cognition in patients diagnosed with B/P-EDs and their mothers.

METHOD: 34 mother-daughter dyads, in which the daughter has B/P-ED and 31 control dyads conducted subjective self-evaluation of alexithymia and underwent objective neuro-cognitive evaluation of their ability to recognize and understand emotions. Results were compared.

RESULTS: First, significant differences were found between the daughters' groups on their subjective but not objective evaluation of alexithymia. Second, within group motherdaughter correlation was positive for controls, but not for the ED group.

CONCLUSIONS: People with B/P-ED show subjective high levels of alexithymia but not an objective deficit in emotional understanding. However, there is an interesting dis-correlation between them and their mothers, which calls for further research.