Construction and preliminary validation of a picture task for the evaluation of emotional competence in children from 4 to 8 years based on the alexithymia theory

Alexithymia is defined as a difficulty in recognizing and describing one’s emotions, characterized by constricted imaginal processes and externally oriented thinking. During the last ten years several studies have investigated the relationship between alexithymia and health in childhood and adolescence, confirming that alexithymia could be defined as a risk factor for pathology also during development. Research in the field is currently constrained by the scarcity of instruments for the assessment of alexithymia in children. The objective of the present study is to create and validate a task for the evaluation of emotional competence in children from 4 to 8, based on the construct of alexithymia. Specifically, the task aims to evaluate childrens’ abilities in identifying and describing emotions, and in imagining a fantasy story on an emotional topic. In a first part of the task children are asked to choose among 4 pictures, representing 4 basic emotions (happiness, fear, sadness, angry), the emotional expression of a character represented in a situation. Children are also asked to describe what is happening in the images and to tell a story on the emotion investigated. A second part of the task evaluates in a similar way 4 complex emotions (loneliness, envy, shame, guilt). The interviewer assigns a score for two dimensions: Ability in Identifying and Describing Feelings and Imaginal Processes. The task was administered to 100 children recruited in kindergarten and elementary schools of Rome, during school time, with the presence of a teacher. Preliminary results showed no relationships between the two dimension scores and the children’s age and gender. A significant correlation was found between the Ability in Identifying and Describing Feelings score and the Imaginal Processes score (r=.62; p=.02). Results appear to confirm a possible application and evaluation of the alexithymia construct in children from 4 to 8 years.