A comparative study of alexithymia and emotion control in mothers of students with and without learning disabilities

The purpose of this study was to compare alexithymia and emotion control in mothers of students with and without learning disabilities. This research is a causal-comparative study. The statistical universe of this research includes all mothers of students aged 9 to 15 with and without learning disabilities in Khorramabad in 1391. The research sample consisted of 50 mothers of students with learning disabilities who were selected using simple random sampling, and 50 mothers of normal students matched on maternal age, education and number of children. The Alexithymia scale and emotion control were used to collect data. The results of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) showed a significant difference between both groups of mothers in alexithymia and emotional control (p<0.001). These results suggest that the mothers of these students experience high levels of anxiety and depression because of unrealistic expectations and ceaseless blame on themselves. It is likely that the due to lack of emotional awareness and cognitive dysfunction in processing their feelings, these mothers are usually unable to identify, understand or describe their emotions and have limited ability to cope with stressful situations.