17535
Multidimensional Assessment of Empathy in Children with ASD
Successful social interaction requires the ability to recognize and interpret others’ emotions. These skills are considered foundational for empathy, but research suggests that empathy is not a single construct. Cognitive empathy (CE), the capacity to infer others’ mental states, is closely related to emotion recognition. Affective/emotional empathy (EE) is the observer’s emotional response to another person’s emotional state. Previous studies examining CE and EE in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) report impaired CE but intact EE (Rogers et al. 2007). Many previous studies of empathy used paradigms that individually measured either CE or EE and relied on direct self-report of EE. To address these concerns, Dziobek et al. (2008) developed the Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET). The paradigm was designed to measure CE and EE simultaneously, including both direct (sympathy) and indirect (arousal) measures. In this report, adults with ASD were impaired in CE, but not on EE, consistent with previous reports. However, there are no published reports utilizing this multidimensional paradigm in children with ASD.
Objectives:
We aimed to simultaneously measure CE and EE in children with ASD using a modified version of the MET, the Multifaceted Empathy Test-Juvenile (MET-J: Poustka et al., 2010), expecting to replicate previous findings in adults with ASD.
Methods:
19 children with ASD and 17 typically developing (TD) children, ages of 7-16, participated. Participants viewed photographs of people in emotionally charged situations and were asked to infer the person’s emotion by choosing from a list of four adjectives (CE). As an indirect measure of EE, participants were asked to rate their arousal in response to each picture using a visual-analog scale (SAM; Lang et al. 1997). Feedback was given after all CE decisions in order to assure subsequent arousal judgments were based on the correct emotion. Lastly, as a direct measure of EE, participants rated how much they sympathized with the person in the picture, using a visual-analogue scale.
Results:
There were no significant differences between ASD and TD individuals on EE (t(34) = 1.18 , p = .247) or arousal (t(34) = .79 , p = .437). However, the groups differed on CE (t(34) = 2.09 , p = .044) , with lower accuracy in the ASD group. Additionally, there were significant positive correlations between arousal and EE (ASD, r = .916, p < .001 TD, r = .801, p < .001). CE and arousal were also negatively correlated in the ASD group (r = -.619, p= .005).
Conclusions:
Consistent with prior studies, children with ASD were less accurate at explicitly identifying emotions (CE) but demonstrated intact emotional empathy. Strong positive correlations between arousal and EE are consistent with the somatic marker hypothesis of emotion (Damasio et al.,1991). The ASD group’s ability to correctly identify emotions (CE) decreased as arousal increased, suggesting a possible role of anxiety. The MET-J dissociated CE deficits from intact EE in this sample, confirming and extending previous findings in adults to children with ASD. Future directions include the use of physiological measures of arousal to validate the arousal ratings.