PERCEPTION OF PROVERBS AND SAYINGS BY RUSSIAN-SPEAKING INFORMANTS WITH A HIGH LEVEL OF ALEXITHYMIA

Perception of linguistic units with various complexity by people with a high level of alexithymia is urgent in modern applied linguistics and in clinical practice. It is known that alexithymic personalities have difficulties in understanding the meaning of lexical units that call emotions, feelings, sensations, and also difficulties in their verbalization. One of the main characteristics of an alexithymical personality is the presence of a specific (so-called “poor”) imagination, which can, in turn, affect the perception and correct interpretation of metaphorical and idiomatic constructions. In scientific literature devoted to this issue, the question of atypical cognitive abilities inherent to alexithymic people is actively discussed. However, the specificity of metaphoric units perception by alexithymic patients has not yet been studied, while all neuropsychological tests aimed at studying the specifics of thinking, as a rule, contain idioms, proverbs and sayings. The article presents the results of a linguistic experiment, the purpose of which was to compare the interpretation of Russian proverbs and sayings by informants with high and low levels of alexithymia. As a result of the experiment, there was no statistically significant difference in the understanding of the meaning of proverbs and sayings by informants with low and high levels of alexithymia, which makes it necessary to clarify the content and details of the features included into the manifestations of “poor” imagination in alexithymic patients.