Empathy In Youth Research Articles

Unveiling the effects of nonviolent communication training on youth empathy

Unveiling the effects of nonviolent communication training on youth empathy

Measuring empathy in youth and young adults with mild intellectual disabilities or borderline intelligence in residential care - The validation of an adapted basic empathy scale: The BES-MID

Youths with mild intellectual disability (MID) are assumed to show impaired cognitive and affective empathy. However, the use of linguistic and conceptual complex empathy measures set limits to the valid and reliable assessment of empathy in youth with MID or borderline intelligence (BI). The objective of the present study was to evaluate the validity and reliability of the adapted BES-MID as an instrument for assessing cognitive and affective empathy in youth and young adults (12–24years) with MID/BI. The current study was conducted in a sample of N = 146 youth and young adults with MID or BI Results from Confirmatory Factor Analyses confirm the two-factor structure of affective and cognitive empathy for the BES-MID. While the original BES cannot be used to assess empathy in youth and young adults with MID or borderline intelligence, the BES-MID showed satisfactory validity and reliability in youth and young adults with MID or borderline intelligence. Despite some limitations and the need for further research, the current study has resulted in a valid and reliable empathy scale (BES-MID) for assessing cognitive and empathic abilities in youth and young adults with MID or borderline intelligence, which is important for future empathy research in youth and young adults with MID or borderline intelligence.

Empathic Accuracy in Female Adolescents with Conduct Disorder and Sex Differences in the Relationship Between Conduct Disorder and Empathy

Research on empathy in youth with Conduct Disorder (CD) has primarily focused on males, with the few studies that have investigated empathy in females relying on questionnaire measures. Our primary aim was to investigate whether females with CD show empathy deficits when using a more ecologically-valid task. We used an empathic accuracy (EA) paradigm that involved watching videos of actors recalling emotional experiences and providing continuous ratings of emotional intensity (assessing EA), naming the emotion expressed (emotion recognition), and reporting whether they shared the emotion expressed (affective empathy). We compared 23 females with CD and 29 typically-developing (TD) adolescents aged 13–18 years. The CD sample was divided into subgroups with higher (CD/CU+) versus lower (CD/CU−) levels of callous-unemotional traits. Females with CD did not differ from TD females in EA or emotion recognition but exhibited reduced affective empathy responses (ps < 0.01, rs ≥ 0.39). The CD/CU+ and CD/CU− subgroups did not differ on any empathy measure. We also assessed for sex differences in CD-empathy associations by comparing the present data with archive data from males. CD adolescents exhibited impairments in EA relative to their TD counterparts overall (p < 0.05, ηp2 = 0.06), but there was no sex-by-diagnosis interaction. While females with CD were only impaired in affective empathy, males with CD exhibited emotion recognition and affective empathy deficits. This study demonstrates that females with CD show relatively specific impairments in affective empathy on an ecologically-valid task, whereas males with CD display more global empathic difficulties.

Youth Anxiety About Political News.

This study assessed youth anxiety about political issues and associated characteristics. Caregivers (N = 374) were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk and reported on their child's anxiety about 15 voting issues covered in the media since the 2016 presidential election as well as their child's psychological functioning and their own trait anxiety. For the majority of voting issues, over 50% of caregivers indicated that their child experienced at least one related worry; worries about the environment and gun violence were most common. Youth empathy and intolerance of uncertainty were each positively associated with worry about political issues but did not predict such worry after accounting for the effect of youth trait anxiety. Youth with clinical levels of generalized anxiety experienced more severe worry about political issues than didyouth with minimal/subthreshold anxiety. Future studies should identify strategies for mitigating the negative impact of political news on youth with anxiety disorders.

Digital poison? Three studies examining the influence of violent video games on youth

The role of violent video games in the development of aggression and mental health issues in youth continues to be controversial in the scholarly community and general public. Compared to college students, few studies have directly examined the potential impact of violent video games on youth and current evidence is mixed. The current article attempts to address this with three studies examining violent game play in youth aged 12–18. In Study 1, youth were randomized to play closely matched action games with either violent or non-violent content. Youth were given the opportunity to act aggressively using an ice water task. Study 2 was a conceptual replication of Study 1, with slower narrative games rather than action games. Study 3 examined the issue in a correlational study of youth, contrasting exposure to violent video games in youth’s personal lives to their exposure to violence in controversial books while controlling for other variables including family, peer and personality variables. None of the studies provided evidence for concerns linking video game violence to aggressive behaviors or reduced empathy in youth.

Dissociation between cognitive and affective empathy in youth with Asperger Syndrome

Autism spectrum conditions, among them Asperger Syndrome (AS), are generally described as entailing deficits in “cognitive empathy” or “theory of mind”. People with AS tend to have difficulties recognizing emotions, although the extent of these difficulties is still unclear. This study aimed to assess empathic profile in youth with AS (N = 38) and controls matched on age, sex and IQ. The study aimed to test if a dissociation between cognitive and affective empathy exists in AS. The study also aimed to explore emotion recognition in people with AS, and how it relates to emotional valence (positive, negative, and neutral emotions). The AS group scored lower than controls on cognitive empathy but scored within the average range on affective empathy. A deficit in emotion recognition was found in the AS group for positive emotions. These results confirm earlier findings in cognitive empathy and provide new insight about emotion recognition abilities in this population.

The basic empathy scale: A French validation of a measure of empathy in youth

The aim of our study was to validate a French version of the basic empathy scale (BES Jolliffe and Farrington (2006)) which measures both cognitive and affective empathy with a sample of 446 adolescents. The confirmatory factorial analysis showed that the French scale has the same factorial structure as in the original version with two-factors (cognitive and affective empathy). The BES exhibited satisfactory internal, test–retest and discriminant validity. Moreover, the females’ superiority in empathy was replicated. So, the BES is one of the first empathy scales to be made available in French and possesses good psychometric qualities.