Abstract
Although empathy impairments have been reported in autistic individuals, there is no clear consensus on how emotional valence influences this multidimensional process. In this study, we use the Multifaceted Empathy Test for juveniles (MET-J) to interrogate emotional and cognitive empathy in 184 participants (ages 8–59 years, 83 autistic) under the robust Bayesian inference framework. Group comparisons demonstrate previously unreported interaction effects between: (1) valence and autism diagnosis in predictions of emotional resonance, and (2) valence and age group in predictions of arousal to images portraying positive and negative facial expressions. These results extend previous studies using the MET by examining differential effects of emotional valence in a large sample of autistic children and adults with average or above-average intelligence. We report impaired cognitive empathy in autism, and subtle differences in emotional empathy characterized by less distinction between emotional resonance to positive vs. negative facial expressions in autism compared to neurotypicals. Reduced emotional differentiation between positive and negative affect in others could be a mechanism for diminished social reciprocity that poses a universal challenge for people with autism. These component- and valence- specific findings are of clinical relevance for the development and implementation of target-specific social interventions in autism.
Highlights
Empathy describes sharing another’s feelings, which involves self-orientation (i.e., “mirroring” emotion), while empathic concern does not require having the same feeling but being aware of and concerned about another’s feeling this capacity for self-other distinction is considered to be crucial and integral to the empathic experience[23]
Some prior work has indicated that emotional valence may moderate diagnostic group differences in empathy[27,35], studies on this topic are scarce and inconsistent, and it remains unclear whether these differences relate to autism symptomatology
The two diagnostic groups were approximately equivalent in terms of sex ratio (OR = 1.091, 95% credible interval (CrI) [0.583, 2.003], BF10 = 0.177), they significantly differed with respect to age (d = 0.457 [0.146, 0.773], BF10 = 22.2), full-scale IQ (d = 0.532 [0.224, 0.846], BF10 = 94.4), verbal IQ (VIQ) (d = 0.657 [0.326, 1.010]), and SRS-2Tscores (d = − 2.896 [− 3.478, − 2.349])
Summary
Empathy describes sharing another’s feelings, which involves self-orientation (i.e., “mirroring” emotion), while empathic concern does not require having the same feeling but being aware of and concerned about another’s feeling this capacity for self-other distinction is considered to be crucial and integral to the empathic experience[23]. This is notable given the growing evidence that these processes typically work together to form a unified p ercept[23] It would be difficult, for example, to speculate on the underpinnings of emotional empathy differences and how these may relate to autism symptomatology, without assessing these separate but related constructs simultaneously. To this end, empathy differences between autistic and neurotypical (NT) individuals have been primarily assessed using multidimensional self-report tools like the Interpersonal Reactivity Index[24] (IRI), Empathy Quotient[14] (EQ), and Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy[25] (QCAE) (for a review, see Song et al, 2019). Participant samples from these studies were predominantly male, providing little to add to reports of sex differences in empathy from theoretical[36] and performance-based studies alike, and warrant further exploration and confirmation in single cohorts that include females
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