Department of Life, Health and Environmental Sciences, University of L'Aquila L'Aquila, Italy.
Psychiatric Service of Diagnosis and Treatment, Department of Mental Health, G. Mazzini Hospital Teramo, Italy.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2014 Oct 7;8:791. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00791. eCollection 2014.
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.
同理心的广泛结构包含认知和情感两个维度。最近的证据表明，自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者在同理心能力方面存在明显缺陷。本研究旨在评估 ASD 青少年与对照组相比在同理心的认知和情感成分方面的差异。15 名 ASD 青少年和 15 名对照组接受了纸笔测试和计算机化的多维同理心测试。所有测试均分为心理化和体验分享能力。与对照组相比，ASD 青少年在所有心理化测试中均表现出缺陷：他们无法解释和理解他人的心理和情绪状态。相反，在体验分享测试中，当 ASD 青少年用积极的情感表达情绪时，他们能够共情他人的情感体验，但当情感效价为负时，他们则无法共情。计算机任务的结果也证实了这一点。总之，我们的研究结果表明，ASD 青少年在认知同理心方面存在困难，而情感同理心的缺陷则是针对负性情绪效价的。
