Do Adults with High Functioning Autism or Asperger Syndrome Differ in Empathy and Emotion Recognition?

Charlotte B Montgomery,Peter E Langdon,Meng-Chuan Lai,Sarah Cassidy,Carrie Allison,Simon Baron-Cohen

doi:10.1007/s10803-016-2698-4

Abstract

The present study examined whether adults with high functioning autism (HFA) showed greater difficulties in (1) their self-reported ability to empathise with others and/or (2) their ability to read mental states in others’ eyes than adults with Asperger syndrome (AS). The Empathy Quotient (EQ) and ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Test (Eyes Test) were compared in 43 adults with AS and 43 adults with HFA. No significant difference was observed on EQ score between groups, while adults with AS performed significantly better on the Eyes Test than those with HFA. This suggests that adults with HFA may need more support, particularly in mentalizing and complex emotion recognition, and raises questions about the existence of subgroups within autism spectrum conditions.

Highlights

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are complex and pervasive neurodevelopmental conditions associated with lifelong difficulties across social, emotional, and behavioural domains (Amaral et al 2008; Groen et al 2008; Lai et al 2013)
The present study examined whether adults with high functioning autism (HFA) showed greater difficulties in (1) their self-reported ability to empathise with others and/or (2) their ability to read mental states in others’ eyes than adults with Asperger syndrome (AS)
This study set out to examine whether there were any difference on measures of empathy between two diagnostic categories on the autism spectrum, AS and HFA

Summary

Introduction

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are complex and pervasive neurodevelopmental conditions associated with lifelong difficulties across social, emotional, and behavioural domains (Amaral et al 2008; Groen et al 2008; Lai et al 2013). A recent study from our group showed that in male adults with ASC, those with versus without language delay partly differed in terms of brain structure (Lai et al 2015) This suggests that subsuming these two subgroups into a single over-arching diagnostic category may risk masking the subtle differences in development and outcome (Lai et al 2013). There is growing evidence to suggest that people with ASC may show greater difficulties with cognitive empathy (the ability to correctly identify other people’s feelings or beliefs and understand the reasons for these) than affective empathy (the ability to offer an appropriate emotional response to another person’s mental state) (Baron-Cohen 2011; Mazza et al 2014). We predicted that HFA would be associated with greater difficulties in these skills as a result of early developmental language acquisition difficulties and the impact that language has on social skills development (Ozonoff et al 2000; Howlin 2003)

Participants

Procedure

Discussion