Affective empathy, cognitive empathy and social attention in children at high risk of criminal behaviour

Abstract

Children at high risk of developing criminal behaviour show impaired affective empathy but unimpaired social attention and cognitive empathy. The implications for early identification and intervention studies with antisocial children are discussed.

The Influence of Empathy Trait and Gender on Empathic Responses. A Study With Dynamic Emotional Stimulus and Eye Movement Recordings

“…The authors reported that the Klinefelter Syndrome subjects showed diminished empathic responses including the three components: affective empathy, cognitive empathy and emotional recognition. However, it is to note that the main symptom associated with Klinefelter syndrome is a cognitive dysfunction (Lee et al, 2010;van Rijn et al, 2014), unlike the two previous studies where the clinical populations manifested social difficulties as the main symptom (van Goozen et al, 2016;van Zonneveld et al, 2017). Overall, further studies are clearly needed to disentangle empathic responses to emotional dynamic stimuli.…”

“…In our experiment, additional elements integrating dynamic stimuli, such as facial expression, tone of voice, and the content of the story, could explain observed differences in comparison to static stimuli. However, contradictory results have been reported from studies using emotional dynamic stimuli; particularly, an unimpaired emotional recognition had been reported in clinical populations and controls using dynamic stimuli (van Goozen et al, 2016;van Zonneveld et al, 2017). In brief, such contradictory results could be more related to the difficulty to consider the concept of emotional recognition than to the composition of emotional stimuli.…”

“…In this line, we have not found studies that examine the influence of both, empathy trait and gender, on the empathic process using dynamic stimuli in typical population. Although some studies have evaluated the empathic process using dynamic stimulus and recorded eye movements in clinical populations (van Rijn et al, 2014;van Goozen et al, 2016;Hubble et al, 2017;van Zonneveld et al, 2017), they did not determine the influence of empathy trait or gender. As far as we know, only one study has included typical adult population, empathy trait, and dynamic stimuli (video) to compare neutral and sad emotions (Cowan et al, 2014).…”

See, Touch, and Feel: Enhancing Young Children's Empathy Learning Through a Tablet Game

“…Against these various research backdrops and in response to the practical issue of how educators might begin sowing the seeds of empathy in young minds, the present study aimed at enhancing empathy and active perception of other's states in a small cohort of 3–6‐year‐olds, by designing a tablet game and evaluating its developmental impact. Many studies of emotion stress the igniting‐role played by “perceiving,” that is, discerning critical signs and cues associated with emotional instances, in affective processes generally (Barrett, ; Zonneveld, Platje, Sonneville, Goozen, & Swaab, ), and specifically in empathically motivated prosocial behavior (de Waal & Preston, ; Decety et al, ; Preston & de Waal, , ). Ontogenically, early years are a very important period when children learn how to regulate their visual attention to interpret important social and emotional cues, while avoiding less important or distracting visual cues in complex social situations (Poulin‐Dubois et al, ; Sankey & Kim, ; Teufel, Fletcher, & Davis, ).…”

Prevention of Deviant Pathways and Rehabilitation from Criminal Activities: Social School by “O Companheiro” Providing an Alternative to the Prison System

“…Adequate empathy skills in children are related to social competence and popularity amongst peers [15]. Empathy deficit disorder in children is considered a risk for committing crimes [16], and children and adolescents with psychopathic traits and conduct problems showed reduced affective responses to inflicting pain in others [17].…”