It is reported that dysfunctional emotional processing found in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be related to impairment of interoception, which refers to the process of sensing, integrating, and interpreting signals originated inside the body. Studies have shown that people with ASD are impaired in empathy, self-related functions, and around 50% of them also suffer from various degrees of alexithymia (i.e., difficulties in identifying and describing one's own emotions).

However, since the roles of alexithymia and empathy on interoceptive sensibility and autistic traits have not been clarified, notable limitations of previous studies include that the relationship between autistic features and interoception was examined without accounting for the effects of social-emotional traits such as alexithymia.

In order to address such an issue, Dr. Raymond Chan's team from the Institute of Psychology has conducted a study utilizing network analysis to clarify the roles of empathy and alexithymia on interoceptive sensibility and autistic traits. Self-report scales were administered to 1,360 healthy volunteers.

In this study, network analysis was used to analyze the relationship between different traits variables. Variables are treated as "nodes", where interactions between variables are represented by "edges" linking various nodes. An edge represents the relationship between two nodes after controlling for the effect of all other nodes. The nodes and edges together form a network that visually displays the overall structure of the system.

Their findings revealed a network connecting autistic traits to interoceptive sensibility, empathy, alexithymia and self-awareness, with reasonable stability and test-retest consistency. Notably, the node representing alexithymia locates in the central of the network, with the highest centrality and expected influence.

Taken together, the researchers suggest that alexithymia may serve as an important node bridging interoceptive deficits, self-awareness, and empathic performance in individuals with Autistic traits. 

They highlighted the importance of co-morbidity of alexithymia in clinical cases with ASD. Future study should take alexithymia into consideration for the study of interoceptive impairments and social deficits in ASD.

This study was supported by the National Science Foundation China and the CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health of the Institute of Psychology.