Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS)

Guided by the idea that alexithymia and other psychopathological phenomena are connected with decreased sensitivity to internal emotional states, Lane and Schwartz (1987) presented a cognitive-developmental theory describing different “Levels of Emotional Awareness”. In 1990, Lane et al. developed a performance measure to identify different states of sensivity to internal emotional states, the “Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale” (LEAS). Subjects are asked to describe anticipated own feelings and those of another person in 20 scenes in a short written answer. We present the results of a study using the German version of the LEAS, the 20-item-version of the Toronto Alexithymia-Scale (TAS 20) and the state-version of the State-Anxiety-Inventory (STAI) on 338 Students of medicine of the Cologne university. The study is discussed with regard to a similar study conducted in the USA (Lane et al. 1996). Theoretical background and psychometric charateristics of the LEAS are related to actual trends in research on alexithymia.