Rieffe Carolien, O'Connor Rachel, Bülow Anne, Willems Danique, Hull Laura, Sedgewick Felicity, Stockmann Lex, Blijd-Hoogewys Els
Leiden University, The Netherlands.
University College London, UK.
Autism. 2021 Jan;25(1):199-209. doi: 10.1177/1362361320956422. Epub 2020 Sep 24.
Empathy is an important feature to feel for another person, evoking social support for the person in distress, and thus strengthening social cohesion. The question is to what extent empathic reactions can also be observed in autistic adolescents and autistic girls in particular, since their often mentioned good social skills might prevent their direct social environment from recognizing their autism. We examined 194 adolescents (autistic and non-autistic boys and girls) during an in vivo task in which the experimenter pretended to hurt herself while closing a binder. All responses by the participants were videotaped and coded by two independent coders. In line with our predictions, no group or gender differences appeared related to their attention for the event; yet autistic girls and boys showed less visible emotional arousal, which could indicate less affective empathy (feeling for someone), or which could indicate that autistic adolescents know less well how to show empathy. Autistic girls and boys reacted by comforting the experimenter equally often as their non-autistic peers, but autistic boys addressed the problem more often than any other group, while girls (autistic and non-autistic) more often addressed the emotion of the person in need. Our findings highlight that empathic behaviour is remarkably similar between autistic and non-autistic boys and girls. Indeed, only subtle differences exist, in terms of expressed emotional arousal and gender-specific comforting styles. Autistic girls' higher levels of emotion-focused comforting could be explained by well-developed social skills, camouflaging, or emotional investment in relationships with others.
同理心是感受他人的一个重要特征，能唤起对处于困境中的人的社会支持，从而增强社会凝聚力。问题在于，在自闭症青少年尤其是自闭症女孩中，能在多大程度上观察到共情反应，因为她们常被提及的良好社交技能可能会使她们的直接社交环境无法识别她们的自闭症。我们在一项现场任务中对194名青少年（自闭症和非自闭症男孩及女孩）进行了研究，在该任务中，实验者在合上活页夹时假装伤到了自己。参与者的所有反应都被录像，并由两名独立的编码员进行编码。与我们的预测一致，在对该事件的关注方面，没有出现组间或性别差异；然而，自闭症女孩和男孩表现出的明显情绪唤醒较少，这可能表明情感同理心（对他人的感受）较少，或者可能表明自闭症青少年不太清楚如何表现出同理心。自闭症女孩和男孩安慰实验者的频率与非自闭症同龄人相同，但自闭症男孩比其他任何组更频繁地解决问题，而女孩（自闭症和非自闭症）更频繁地关注有需要的人的情绪。我们的研究结果突出表明，自闭症和非自闭症男孩及女孩之间的共情行为非常相似。确实，在表达的情绪唤醒和特定性别的安慰方式方面，只存在细微差异。自闭症女孩更高水平的以情绪为中心的安慰可以通过良好的社交技能、伪装或对与他人关系的情感投入来解释。
