Empathic Accuracy and Cognitive and Affective Empathy in Young Adults With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder

K Mckenzie,D Golm,G Fairchild,A Russell

doi:10.1007/s10803-021-05093-7

K Mckenzie, D Golm + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05093-7

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Abstract

This study investigated whether young adults with ASD (n = 29) had impairments in Cognitive Empathy (CE), Affective Empathy (AE) or Empathic Accuracy (EA; the ability to track changes in others’ thoughts and feelings) compared to typically-developing individuals (n = 31) using the Empathic Accuracy Task (EAT), which involves watching narrators recollecting emotionally-charged autobiographical events. Participants provided continuous ratings of the narrators’ emotional intensity (indexing EA), labelled the emotions displayed (CE) and reported whether they shared the depicted emotions (AE). The ASD group showed deficits in EA for anger but did not differ from typically-developing participants in CE or AE on the EAT. The ASD group also reported lower CE (Perspective Taking) and AE (Empathic Concern) on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, a self-report questionnaire.

Highlights

Empathy can be defined as the ability to share others’ feelings or ‘put yourself in their shoes’ (Singer & Lamm, 2009)
Studies of typically-developing adults have reported gender differences in self-report measures of empathy (Baez et al, 2017), scores on the Perspective Taking subscale did not significantly differ by gender; this was true when collapsing across groups (U = 341 z = − 1.62, p = 0.106) and when analysing the ASD Group only (U = 101 z = − 0.045, p = 0.983)
Contrary to our hypothesis and previous research showing an association between alexithymia and impaired empathy [using facial emotion recognition tasks (Prkachin et al, 2009) and empathic brain responses (Bird et al, 2010)], we found a positive relationship between alexithymia and some aspects of empathy in the ASD Group (Personal Distress on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and cognitive empathy (CE) for anger)

Summary

Introduction

Empathy can be defined as the ability to share others’ feelings or ‘put yourself in their shoes’ (Singer & Lamm, 2009). The literature suggests that empathy is a multi-dimensional concept (Davis, 1980, 1983; Decety, 2015), which includes cognitive empathy (CE), defined as the ability to understand others’ feelings, beliefs and intentions (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004; Bos & Stokes, 2019), and affective empathy (AE), which is characterised by “an emotional response in an individual that stems from and parallels the emotional state of another individual” A wide range of methods have been used to measure CE and AE within the literature, with self-report questionnaire measures being most commonly used. People may lack insight into their empathic abilities, believing themselves to be more empathic than they really are

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