Cognition and Neurosciences Alexithymia is associated with an augmenter profile, but not only: Evidence for anticipation to arousing music DELPHINE GRYNBERG, 1 DMITRY M. DAVYDOV 2 , NICOLAS VERMEULEN 1 and OLIVIER LUMINET 1 1 Universite ´ catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve and National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS-FRS), Belgium 2 P.K. Anokhin Institute of Normal Physiology, Moscow, Russia Grynberg, D., Davydov, D. M., Vermeulen, N. & Luminet, O. (2012). Alexithymia is associated with an augmenter profile, but not only: Evidence for anticipation to arousing music. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 375–381. It has been suggested that high alexithymia scorers have an ‘augmenter’ profile which amplifies their physiological and subjective responses to highly arousing stimuli. The aim of this study was to test this theory using several physiological measures. Participants listened to musical excerpts either in a ‘weak-to-strong’ or a ‘strong-to-weak’ order of arousing levels of stimuli. The results show that alexithymia was associated with an augmenter profile for subjective reports for the most arousing stimulus and with stronger skin conductance level responses in the ‘strong-to-weak’ order. These results partially support the augmenter profile and reveal that alexithymia may be associated with higher anticipation for the most arousing excerpt. Key words: Alexithymia, augmenter, arousal, skin conductance, music. Delphine Grynberg, Research Institute for Psychological Sciences, 10, Place Cardinal Mercier, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. E-mail: delphine.grynberg@uclouvain.be INTRODUCTION Alexithymia is defined as a difficulty in identifying, differentiat- ing and describing feelings. Alexithymia is also characterized by an external way of thinking which is oriented towards the prag- matic elements of everyday life (Taylor, 2000). This construct was initially introduced to describe clinical patients with so- called psychosomatic diseases who experienced difficulties describing their emotions and who presented impoverished men- tal representations of their emotional states. Moreover, individu- als who score high on alexithymia tend to have poor affect regulation (e.g., Taylor, Bagby & Parker, 1997). A high preva- lence of alexithymia has been observed in some somatic dis- eases such as cardiovascular problems (e.g., Numata, Ogata, Oike, Matsumara & Shimada, 1998). Alexithymia is also associ- ated with an impaired ability to recognize bodily sensations (e.g., Herbert, Herbert & Pollatos, 2011), and is well represented in somatization (for a review: Lumley, Neely & Burger, 2007). Somatization is characterized by high amounts of somatic com- plaints and amplification and misinterpretation of somatic sensa- tions as signs of physical illness (Lundh & Simonsson-Sarnecki, 2001). Lumley et al. (2007) proposed that alexithymia is related to an amplification of sensations of physical and proprioceptive stimuli. This suggests that greater reports (over-reporting) of physical complaints among high alexithymia scorers (HA) (e.g., Wearden, Lamberton, Crook & Walsh, 2005), might result from higher sensitivity to somatic sensations without physical illness. Indeed, HA show a lower tolerance to touch (Sivik, 1993) and report, with auto-evaluative questionnaires, somatosensory amplification (e.g., Wise & Mann, 1994; Nakao, Barsky, Kumano & Kuboki; 2002; Sayar, Kirmayer & Taillefer, 2003). As somatosensory amplifica- tion is hypothesized to be linked with somatization (Barsky, 1992), it has been suggested that somatosensory amplification could mediate the associations between alexithymia and somatiza- tion (Wise & Mann, 1994). Research has also shown that somatosensory amplification is stronger in HA, but only for intense stimulation. While HA have similar pain thresholds for weak pain stimuli as low alexithymia scorers (LA), they have a lower tolerance to highly painful stimuli (Nyklicek & Vingerhoets, 2000; Huber, Suman, Biasi & Carli, 2009). In line with these results, some authors have suggested that HA demonstrate an ‘augmenter’ profile, while low LA would have a ‘reducer’ profile (Morrison & Pihl, 1990; Scha ¨fer, Schnei- der, Tress & Franz, 2007). According to the reducing/augmenting theory, augmenters amplify their psychophysiological responses and their subjective responses to arousing sensory stimulations, while reducers attenuate them (Morrison & Pihl, 1990; Larsen & Zarate, 1991). Reducers adopt regulation strategies, which allow them to reduce their arousal at high levels of a given stimulus, while augmenters are generally more vulnerable to highly arous- ing stimulation (Scha ¨fer et al., 2007). Evidence for the augmenter profile of HA is strengthened by several studies that found that HA had a lower tolerance to the strongest, pain stimuli compared to LA (e.g., Kano, Hamaguchi, Itoh, Yanai & Fukudo, 2007). Moreover, when administered, the strongest pain stimulation HA, exhibited higher levels of stress- related hormones relative to LA and higher brain activation in regions typically activated during visceral stimulation (Kano et al., 2007). HA also report higher pain and anxiety but only during strongest stimulation. Scha ¨fer et al. (2007) manipulated the sound intensity (dB) of white noises and showed that the amplitudes of the attentional neurophysiological components were larger only in HA during intense stimuli, which meant that they were more alert and allocated more attentional resources to these stimuli. This aug- mentation of their physiological reactivity may lead HA to over- report somatic sensations and thus to acquire the somatoform dis- order (Scha ¨fer et al., 2007). One of the challenges of diagnosing Ó 2012 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology Ó 2012 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. ISSN 0036-5564. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 2012, 53, 375–381 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9450.2012.00962.x