Alexithymia Observation Scale for Children (AOSC)
(Fukunishi et al., 1998 ).
Variable
The AOSC ( Fukunishi et al., 1998 ) aimed to develop an alexithymia observations scale for children, to be filled
out on base of behavioral observations.
Sample
The sample in the Fukunishi et al. (1998) study consisted of 286 elementary school children (151 boys and 135
girls, M59.0 years, SD51.4 years), that were in Grade 1 ( N532), Grade 2 ( N531), Grade 3 ( N577), Grade 4
(N574), Grade 5 ( N539) and Grade 6 ( N533). Twelve schoolteachers served as raters, observing the children’s
behavior on the playground and during school activities over at least a six-month time period.
Description
The authors started with 23 items that covered three facets; ‘Difficulty in communicating feelings to others’,
‘Poor fantasy life’, and ‘Externally oriented thinking’. However, the authors stated that ‘poor fantasy life’, and
‘externally oriented thinking’ are not observable traits; they therefore, opted for items referring to ‘Difficulty
relating to others’. For reasons of low item-total correlations and low factor loadings they reduced the number
of items to 12. Thus the final scale covered two facets ‘Difficulty in communicating feelings to others’, and
‘Difficulty relating to others’. All items have face validity for their facets as described by the authors.
Reliability
Internal Consistency
Fukunishi et al. (1998) reported a Cronbach alpha coefficient of .84.
Test/C0Retest
Stability correlations over a two-month test /C0retest interval were found to be for AOSC (.71), for ‘Difficulty in
communicating feelings to others’ (.72), and for ‘Difficulty relating to others’ (.74) ( Fukunishi et al., 1998 ).
Validity
Construct/Factor Analytic
A principal components analysis ( N5286) resulted in two components labeled: ‘Difficulties describing feel-
ings’ (7 items), and ‘Difficulty relating to others’ (5 items). The correlation between the two subscales was found
to be .14 ( Fukunishi et al., 1998 ).
Criterion/Predictive
Fukunishi et al. (1998) reported that AOSC scores correlated positively with the Yatabe /C0Guilford Personality
Test. Subscales: Depression (.26), and Lack of Cooperativeness (.27), and negatively with the subscales:
Ascendance ( /C0.42), and Social Extraversion ( /C0.39).
The authors ( Fukunishi, Tsuruta, Hirabayashi, & Asukai 2001 ) further demonstrated that total and subscale
scores were significantly higher for children with refractory hematological diseases ( N533,M58.1 years;
SD54.3) compared with a control group ( N5286, matched for gender and age). Furthermore, scores on the
observer Posttraumatic Stress Response Checklist in the hematological diseases sample, correlated (.40) with the
AOSC subscale ‘Difficulty in communicating feelings to others’, but not with the subscale ‘Difficulty relating to
others’.
Location
Fukunishi, I, Yoshida, H. & Wogan, J. (1998). Development of the Alexithymia Scale for Children: A prelimi-
nary study. Psychological Reports, 82, 43/C049.
Results and Comments
To our knowledge there are no other currently available psychometric publications relating to the AOSC mea-
sure. However, the results point to good factor structure, sufficient internal consistency, and test /C0retest reliability248 9. MEASURES OF ALEXITHYMIA
III. EMOTION REGULATION