Do Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders Help Other People With Autism Spectrum Disorders? An Investigation of Empathy and Helping Motivation in Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Hidetsugu Komeda,Hirotaka Kosaka,Toru Fujioka,Hidehiko Okazawa,Minyoung Jung

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00376

Hidetsugu Komeda, Hirotaka Kosaka + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00376

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Abstract

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often lack cognitive empathy, so they experience difficulty in empathizing with others. Although deficits in social abilities, such as empathy, have been demonstrated in previous studies, most stimuli used in previous studies were developed for typically developing (TD) individuals. Previous studies have demonstrated that adults with and without ASD display empathetic responses toward similar others. Adults with ASD (n = 22, 7 women and 15 men, mean age = 26.8 years) and intelligence- and age-matched TD adults (n = 20, 8 women and 12 men, mean age = 24.0 years) participated in the study. They were instructed to read 24 stories (12 stories featured protagonists with characteristics of ASD, and the other 12 featured TD protagonists) and respond to the following questions: “How did the protagonist feel?” and “Would you help if the protagonist were in trouble?” After controlling for alexithymia and AQ based on multiple regression analyses, individuals with ASD empathize with other people who have ASD and are motivated to help other people with ASD. Additionally, social skills and attention to detail were associated with decreased helping motivation for story characters with ASD. Social skills among AQ subscales (social skills, attention switching, attention to detail, communication, and imagination) were the most potent predictor of decreased helping motivation. These findings suggest that the reason why individuals with ASD are considered to have limited cognitive empathy and helping motivation could be related to alexithymia and the lack of social skills and attention to detail, which are related to atypical perception.

Highlights

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by difficulties with reciprocal social interaction, atypical communication, repetitive behaviors, and narrow interests [1]
autism spectrum disorder (ASD) participants showed greater empathetic responses in ASD stories than typically developing (TD) participants, whereas TD participants showed greater empathetic responses in TD stories than ASD participants. These results suggested that the empathy for ASD story characters was higher in participants with ASD than in TD participants, whereas the empathy for TD story characters was higher in TD participants than in participants with ASD
TD participants showed greater motivation for helping in TD stories than ASD participants, whereas ASD participants did not show a greater motivation for helping in ASD stories than TD participants

Summary

Introduction

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by difficulties with reciprocal social interaction, atypical communication, repetitive behaviors, and narrow interests [1]. Empathy plays a crucial role in communication because it enables individuals to understand another’s feelings and to use judgment to assess others’ actions [2, 3]. Empathy is more likely to occur when there is a similarity between the participant and the target [6]. We are often more satisfied with interactions involving individuals similar to ourselves [7]. People generally prefer individuals with personalities similar to their own [8, 9]. People show in-group biases toward their in-group and feel more similar to them than to members of out-groups, even when the composition of those groups is based on random assignment [10]

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