The aim of this study was to examine the connections between alexithymic traits and Finnish children’s ability to recognize emotions from facial expressions. Alexithymia refers to an individual’s difficulty to recognize, differentiate and name one’s own emotions, and it has been associated with mental disorders and social difficulties. In addition, alexithymia has been linked to decreased ability to recognize others’ emotions. Our first research question was whether alexithymic traits predict the performance in a facial emotion recognition task. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that children with more alexithymic traits perform poorer in the facial emotion recognition task. Our second research question was whether alexithymic traits predict the time spent completing the facial emotion recognition task. Based on previous research our hypothesis was that children with more alexithymic traits take more time completing the task. The subject has been previously studied in adults, but the research in children is limited. This study examined these questions for the first time in Finnish children.

Our research data was part of the “Tunteet läpi elämän” research project and was collected in Tampere University in 2021. The data consisted of 52 Finnish children between the ages of 10 and 15. The participants filled out a self-assessment Emotion Awareness Questionnaire (EAQ) and completed a computer-assisted facial emotion recognition task FEFA-2 displaying pictures of basic emotions. From the EAQ we examined those factors that measure the ability to distinguish emotions, verbalize emotions and bodily awareness. From the FEFA-2 task, we examined the number of correct answers and the time spent completing the task. We examined the connections between alexithymia and the ability to recognize emotions from facial expressions with correlations and regressions analysis.

In our data alexithymic traits did not predict the performance in the facial expression recognition task. Out of the alexithymia factors, the ability to differentiate emotions and the ability to verbalize emotions did not predict the time taken completing the facial expression recognition task either. Contrary to our assumption, the alexithymia factor assessing bodily awareness predicted the time taken completing the facial emotion recognition task with weaker bodily awareness, and thus higher alexithymia, predicting faster completion of the facial emotion recognition task.

According to our results alexithymic traits are not a significant predictor in the ability to infer emotions from facial expressions. However, in our study there were several limitations, and our results contradict previous research. Because of these reasons, conclusions from our study should be made with caution. To understand the connections between alexithymic traits and the ability to recognize facial expressions better, more research especially about children from several different cultures is needed.