Individual differences in emotional processing and autobiographical memory: interoceptive awareness and alexithymia in the fading affect bias

ABSTRACT

The capacity to perceive internal bodily states is linked to emotional awareness and effective emotional regulation. We explore individual differences in emotional awareness in relation to the fading affect bias (FAB), which refers to the greater dwindling of unpleasant compared to pleasant emotions in autobiographical memory. We consider interoceptive awareness and alexithymia in relation to the FAB, and private event rehearsal as a mediating process. With increasing interoceptive awareness, there was an enhanced FAB, but with increasing alexithymia, there was a decreased FAB. Further, the effects of interoceptive awareness were partially mediated by private rehearsal of pleasant events. We provide novel evidence that capacity for emotional awareness and thus effective processing is an important factor predictive of the FAB. Moreover, our results imply an important role for maintaining positive affect in the FAB. Our findings offer new insights into the effects of interoception and alexithymia on autobiographical memory, and support concepts of the FAB emerging as a result of adaptive emotional regulation processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Fading affect bias
• autobiographical memory
• emotion
• alexithymia
• interoceptive awareness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. None of the subscales of the MAIA measure moderated the relationship between event valence and fading affect using Model #1 (Notice: b = −.01, t = −.36, p = .71, 95% CI −.08, .06; Not-distract: b = −.04, t = −1.42, p = .15, 95% CI −.11, .02; Not-worry: b = .01, t = .39, p = .73, 95% CI −.06, .08; Trust: b = .02, t = .09, p = .92, 95% CI −.47, .52; Attention regulation: b = .02, t = .73, p = .46, 95% CI −.04, .08; Self-regulation: b = −.04, t = −1.69, p = .09, 95% CI −.10, .01; body listening: b = −.03, t = −1.27, p = .20, 95% CI −.14, .10; and emotional awareness: b = −.02, t = −.33, p = .73, 95% CI −.14, .10).

2. The effects of MAIA total scores on the FAB were not mediated through social disclosure frequency (b = .0004, 95% CI −.0002, .001) or overall private rehearsal frequency (b = −.0009, 95% CI −.003, .0007). Apart from private rehearsals in response to mood, none of the other specific private rehearsal types emerged as significant mediators (no reason: b = −.002, 95% CI −.003, .005; cues: b = −.0006, 95% CI −.002, .0005; reflect: b = .0004, 95% CI −.0003, .001; remember: b = −.0005, 95% CI −.001, .0004; and feel: b = .0008, 95% CI −.0002, .002).

3. To confirm the robustness of our findings we re-ran the PROCESS macro increasing the resample size to 5000 whilst keeping an alpha of .05. Similar values of the estimates were obtained when using these parameters.

4. None of the subscales of the TAS-20 were significant moderators of the FAB using Model #1 (DIF: b = .01, t = 1.32, p = .18, 95% CI −.01, .04; DDF: b = .03, t = 1.60, p = .11, 95% CI −.01, .07; EOT: b = −.001, t = −.05, p = .96, 95% CI −.04, .04).

5. The effects of TAS-20 total scores upon the FAB were not mediated through social disclosure frequency (b = −.0007, 95% CI −.0024, .0004) or overall private rehearsal frequency (b = .004, 95% CI −.001, .007). None of the specific private rehearsal types emerged as significant mediators (no reason: b = .002, 95% CI −.001, .006; cues: b = .001, 95% CI −.009, .003; mood: (b = .003, 95% CI −.0001, .006); reflect: b = .001, 95% CI −.002, .001; remember: b = .001, 95% CI −.003, .004; and feel: b = −.002, 95% CI −.003, .002).