Emotion recognition and expression in young obese partecipants: preliminary study

This study investigated the presence of alexithymic characteristics in obese adolescents and preadolescents, testing the hypothesis of whether they had an impaired ability in emotion recognition and expression. The sample included 30 obese young participants compared to a control group composed of 30 participants with normal weight for their ages. Stimuli were 42 faces representing 7 emotional expressions. Stimuli were shown to participants who were asked to identify the emotion expressed by the face. The Level of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) was adapted for children and administered to participants to evaluate their ability to describe their emotions. Young obese participants had significantly lower scores in the LEAS compared to control participants, but no differences were found in the emotion recognition task. The lack of words to describe emotions could suggest a greater prevalence of alexithymic characteristics in obese participants, but the hypothesis of a general deficit in the processing of emotional experiences was not supported.