Motor, Emotional, and Cognitive Empathy in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Conduct Disorder

Abstract

It is unclear which aspects of empathy are shared and which are uniquely affected in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and conduct disorder (CD) as are the neurobiological correlates of these empathy impairments. The aim of this systematic review is to describe the overlap and specificity of motor, emotional, and cognitive aspects of empathy in children and adolescents with ASD or CD. Motor and cognitive empathy impairments are found in both ASD and CD, yet the specificity seems to differ. In ASD facial mimicry and emotion recognition may be impaired for all basic emotions, whereas in CD this is only the case for negative emotions. Emotional empathy and the role of attention to the eyes therein need further investigation. We hypothesize that impaired motor and cognitive empathy in both disorders are a consequence of lack of attention to the eyes. However, we hypothesize major differences in emotional empathy deficits between ASD and CD, probably due to emotional autonomic and amygdala hyper-responsivity in ASD versus hypo-responsivity in CD, both resulting in lack of attention to the eyes.

The Basic Empathy Scale adapted to French middle childhood: Structure and development of empathy

“…Finally, the BES-C could prove useful for studying empathy from a new perspective, particularly in children who display impaired empathy, such as those with autism spectrum disorder (e.g., Bons et al, 2013;Schwenck et al, 2012). This would extend the current literature on empathy in middle childhood.…”

Identifying mechanisms that underlie links between COMT genotype and aggression in male adolescents with ADHD

“…Our results further suggest that poorer ability to feel other's fear in those with ADHD maybe a pathway from COMT to aggression. The importance of empathy skills in relation to psychopathology has become increasingly recognised and is an emerging area of neuroscience (Panksepp & Panksepp, 2013); empathy deficits have been proposed as an explanatory mechanism underlying social impairments characteristic of many different psychiatric disorders including Conduct Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)(Bons et al., 2013). The present study supports findings that understanding (cognitive empathy) and feeling (affective empathy) others' emotions can be meaningfully disaggregated (Bons et al., 2013).…”

Investigating the Use of a video-based Social Information Processing Interview Schedule (SIPIS) for Individuals with ASD subtypes

“…However, past studies showed weak to moderate correlations between emotion and cognitive functioning, suggesting that the two operate at different brain levels [21]. Decety and Meyer [22] attempted to explain the difference between the three social information processing aspects in terms of two different neural pathways that are running in parallel and interrelated, that is, a bottom-up process based on emotion perception-action coupling and potentially underpinned by mirror neuron systems and a top-down meta-cognitive executive regulatory control that modulates lower-emotion perception-action mechanisms.…”