Alexithymia in parents of children with autism spectrum disorder.
Fathers of kids with autism who struggle to name their own feelings tend to have children with more repetitive behaviors.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Szatmari et al. (2008) asked parents of children with autism to fill out a short checklist about feelings.
The checklist measures alexithymia — trouble naming or noticing emotions.
Parents also rated how often their child shows repetitive behaviors like hand-flapping or lining up toys.
What they found
Mothers and fathers of kids with autism scored higher on the emotion checklist than other parents.
Dads with higher scores had children who showed more repetitive behaviors.
The link only showed up for fathers, not mothers.
How this fits with other research
Yap et al. (2018) extends this idea. They found that typical adults who show rigid autism-like traits are extra quick to spot angry voices.
Together the papers say the "broader autism phenotype" can show up as either flat feelings or sharp social radar.
Bassett-Gunter et al. (2017) argue we should track parent traits like alexithymia in every parent-training study.
Costa-Silva et al. (2025) add that parent stress links to child sleep bruxism, showing parent mood and child symptoms often travel together.
Why it matters
If a father says "I never know what I’m feeling," note it. His emotion style may shape how you teach play or self-help skills.
Add a quick alexithymia scale to your intake packet. When dads score high, build extra emotion-labeling practice into parent coaching.
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Join Free →Hand the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale to every dad at intake; if he scores high, add "name that feeling" drills for both parent and child in your next session.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Given the recent findings regarding the association between alexithymia and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and the accumulating evidence for the presence of the Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) in relatives of individuals with ASD, we further explored the construct of alexithymia in parents of children with ASD as a potential part of the BAP. We hypothesized that (a) parents of children with ASD will demonstrate higher impairment in their emotion processing when compared to controls, and (b) high impairment in emotion processing in parents will be associated with severity of symptoms in children with ASD. Psychometric and diagnostic data were collected on 188 children with a diagnosis of ASD. The Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) was completed by 439 parents of children with ASD and a control group of 45 parents of children with Prader Willi syndrome (PW). Results show that ASD parents score higher than controls on the TAS-20 total score. Within the ASD group, children of fathers with high alexithymia score higher on repetitive behaviour symptoms compared to children of fathers with low alexithymia. The alexithymia trait appears to be one of the many building blocks that make up the BAP.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2008 · doi:10.1007/s10803-008-0576-4