Naturalistic social cognition: Empathic accuracy in mixed-sex dyads.

Empathic accuracy in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

“…The procedure used was based on Ickes and colleagues (Ickes, Stinson, Bissonnette, & Garcia, 1990;Marangoni, Garcia, Ickes, & Teng, 1995) and Ponnet and colleagues (Ponnet, Buysse, Roeyers, & De Corte, 2005). The dyad members (one with ADHD and one without ADHD), previously unacquainted to each other, were scheduled to come to the research centre at the same time.…”

“…Good evidence for both the reliability and the validity of this method has been provided (Marangoni, Garcia, Ickes, & Teng, 1995). Empathic accuracy is defined as the degree to which an individual is able to accurately infer the specific content of another person's thoughts and feelings (Ickes et al, 1990;Zaki, Bolger, & Ochsner, 2008). In the current study, the standard stimulus design was used to investigate the empathic accuracy abilities in different groups of adolescents.…”

“…In this paradigm, individual participants look at the same standard set of videotaped interactions and try to infer the thoughts and feelings of the same set of target persons (Marangoni et al, 1995;Roeyers et al, 2001). Ickes and his colleagues provided good evidence for the reliability and the validity of this method (Ickes, 1993;Ickes et al, 1990;Marangoni et al, 1995;Roeyers et al, 2001). …”

“…Based on the guidelines of Ickes and colleagues, the empathic accuracy scores were calculated by comparing each inference of the perceiving participant with the original thought/feeling entry obtained from the targets (Ickes et al, 1990). Six naive and independent coders were asked to compare each participant's inferred thought/feeling with the corresponding original thought/feeling entry and to rate the level of similarity on a 3-point scale, ranging from 0 (essentially different content) through 1 (somewhat similar but not the same content) to 2 (essentially the same content) ('I don't know' and missing answers were rated 0).…”

“…Social interaction in the real world is much more complex and the Eyes Test can hardly be seen as a naturalistic measure of social understanding (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill et al, 2001). A more naturalistic way of measuring empathic ability is provided by the empathic accuracy design of Ickes and colleagues (Ickes, 1993;Ickes, Stinson, Bissonnette, & Garcia, 1990). Good evidence for both the reliability and the validity of this method has been provided (Marangoni, Garcia, Ickes, & Teng, 1995).…”