Alexithymia disrupts verbal short-term memory

While some research have now started to show long-term memory (LTM) deficits in alexithymia, short-term memory (STM) remained largely unexplored. We investigated whether the STM trace for emotion and neutral words might also be disrupted by alexithymia. Forty four participants were randomly assigned to study 1 in which the to-be-memorized 6-words lists were composed of words belonging to the same valence (i.e., pure lists condition, Study 1) and 44 other participants were randomly assigned to study 2 in which 6-words lists were composed of embedded neutral and emotional words (i.e., mixed lists condition). All the participants completed the Toronto-Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and a current mood states scale (PANAS). Results showed that a main effect of Alexithymia was observed in the pure lists condition while no alexithymia groups effect emerged in the mixed lists condition. In the pure lists condition only, correlation analyses confirmed that alexithymia significantly and negatively correlated with recall accuracy. The results are discussed with regard to the influence of alexithymia on the proposed role of 1) semantic organization of LTM on STM performance in the pure lists condition, and 2) attentional capture by emotion words in the mixed lists condition.