Affective and cognitive empathy in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

The broad construct of empathy incorporates both cognitive and affective dimensions. Recent evidence suggests that the subjects with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) show a significant impairment in empathic ability. The aim of this study was to evaluate the cognitive and affective components of empathy in adolescents with ASD compared to controls. Fifteen adolescents with ASD and 15 controls underwent paper and pencil measures and a computerized Multifaceted Empathy Test. All measures were divided into mentalizing and experience sharing abilities. Adolescents with ASD compared to controls showed deficits in all mentalizing measures: they were incapable of interpreting and understanding the mental and emotional states of other people. Instead, in the sharing experience measures, the adolescents with ASD were able to empathize with the emotional experience of other people when they express emotions with positive valence, but were not able to do so when the emotional valence is negative. These results were confirmed by the computerized task. In conclusion, our results suggest that adolescents with ASD show a difficulty in cognitive empathy, whereas the deficit in affective empathy is specific for the negative emotional valence.

Empathising and systematising in children with and without autism spectrum disorder

“…(Jones et al, 2010). In the study carried out by Mazza et al (2014); Schwenck et al (2012) and Rueda, Fernández-Berrocal & Baron-Cohen (2015), similar results were repeated for various ages. It was seen that these results repeated the results of previous studies performed before (Dyck, Ferguson and Shochet, 2001;Dziobeck et al, 2008;Johnson, Filliter and Murphy, 2009;Rogers et al, 2007).…”

“…Therefore, many researchers use the notion of cognitive empathy synonymously with the notions of theory of mind or mentalizing Blair, 2005); (2) affective empathy, on the other hand, is defined as the ability to respond emotionally to others (Lawrence et al, 2004, Sucksmith et al, 2013. There has been a recent increase in studies that show that individuals with autism have a greater difficulty and inability in cognitive empathy rather than emotional empathy (Baron-Cohen 2011; Mazza et al 2014). …”

Two systems for empathy in obsessive-compulsive disorder: mentalizing and experience sharing

“…15 For this reason, empathy has recently been considered a multifaceted concept that includes at least two dimensions: explicitly considering others' internal states (mentalizing) and sharing those states (experience sharing). 11,[16][17][18][19] According to the recent literature, 11,16 mentalizing ability examines ToM capacity by asking subjects to draw explicit inferences about the mental states of others and their ability to represent those states outside of the ''here and now'' including the future, past, counterfactuals, and targets' perspectives. Experience sharing is the tendency to take on, resonate with, or ''share'' the emotions of others, and it is often tied to a mechanism known as ''neural resonance.''…”

“…Experience sharing is the tendency to take on, resonate with, or ''share'' the emotions of others, and it is often tied to a mechanism known as ''neural resonance.'' 10 Several neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, 13,20,21 autism spectrum disorders, 11,[22][23][24][25] psychopathy, 26 brain injury, 27 and frontotemporal lobe degeneration, 28 feature different subprocesses of empathy deficits. 13 Accordingly, assessment of the recognition and processing of emotion in individuals with OCD would provide a more comprehensive evaluation of these subjects and could explain many social and interpersonal aspects of their disease.…”

“…Emotional recognition capacity is part of the complex construct called social cognition. [9][10][11] Social cognition refers to a relatively large number of psychological constructs that range from complex concepts, such as theory of mind (ToM), to more elementary concepts, such as emotion perception, processing of social cues or social perception, and empathic ability. 9 The latter capacity allows one to understand and share the emotional states of others in reference to oneself and plays a critical role in social interaction, from bonding between mother and child to understanding others' feelings and subjective psychological states.…”