Schwenck Christina, Schmitt Dominique, Sievers Sabrina, Romanos Marcel, Warnke Andreas, Schneider Wolfgang
Klinik für Psychiatrie, Psychosomatik und Psychotherapie des Kindes- und Jugendalters, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a. Main.
Z Kinder Jugendpsychiatr Psychother. 2011 Jul;39(4):265-76. doi: 10.1024/1422-4917/a000118.
This study assesses the cognitive and emotional empathic competence in groups of children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders compared to a nonclinical control group. Subjective and objective diagnostic measures were employed.
A total of 96 boys were tested: 20 with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) predominantly inattentive subtype (ADHD-I); 20 with ADHD combined subtype (ADHD-C); 20 with conduct disorder (CD); 36 healthy boys (control group; CG). Mean age was 12.0 years (SD = 2.36). As aspects of cognitive and emotional empathy emotional reactivity, we tested emotion recognition and perspective taking with subjective questionnaires and objective tasks, using as subjective questionnaires the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1983) and the Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescents (IECA; Bryant, 1982). As objective tasks, we adopted the Empathy Response Task (ERT; Ricard & Kamberk-Kilicci, 1995) and a task measuring emotion recognition according to Buitelaar et al. (1999).
The CG outperformed participants with ADHD-C and CD in objective tasks assessing perspective taking, particularly when complex tasks were applied as stimuli. Children with ADHD-I showed significantly more emotional empathy than boys with ADHD-C when presented with simple tasks. No group differences were found for emotion recognition and subjective questionnaires.
Deficits in perspective taking and emotional empathy were found for children with ADHD-C and CD, largely in accordance with the literature. Similar to the processing of cognitive information, the processing of emotional information seems to differ in ADHD subtypes. Objective tasks and tasks with a high ecological validity seem suitable for the measurement of empathy.
本研究评估患有精神疾病的儿童和青少年群体与非临床对照组相比的认知和情感共情能力。采用了主观和客观诊断措施。
共测试了96名男孩：20名患有注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD），主要为注意力不集中亚型（ADHD-I）；20名患有ADHD混合型（ADHD-C）；20名患有品行障碍（CD）；36名健康男孩（对照组；CG）。平均年龄为12.0岁（标准差=2.36）。作为认知和情感共情的情感反应方面，我们使用主观问卷和客观任务测试了情绪识别和观点采择，主观问卷采用人际反应指数（IRI；戴维斯，1983年）和儿童及青少年共情指数（IECA；布莱恩特，1982年）。作为客观任务，我们采用了共情反应任务（ERT；里卡尔和坎伯克-基利奇，1995年）以及一项根据布伊特拉尔等人（1999年）测量情绪识别的任务。
在评估观点采择的客观任务中，对照组的表现优于患有ADHD-C和CD的参与者，尤其是当应用复杂任务作为刺激时。当呈现简单任务时，患有ADHD-I的儿童比患有ADHD-C的男孩表现出明显更多的情感共情。在情绪识别和主观问卷方面未发现组间差异。
患有ADHD-C和CD的儿童在观点采择和情感共情方面存在缺陷，这在很大程度上与文献一致。与认知信息的处理类似，ADHD各亚型在情感信息的处理上似乎也有所不同。客观任务和具有高生态效度的任务似乎适合用于共情的测量。
