Huggins Charlotte F, Donnan Gemma, Cameron Isobel M, Williams Justin Hg
University of Aberdeen, UK.
Autism. 2021 Feb;25(2):307-321. doi: 10.1177/1362361320964306. Epub 2020 Nov 5.
Autistic people are thought to have difficulties with identifying and understanding their own emotions. This is referred to as It is important to study emotional self-awareness as people who are more able to understand their own emotions, whether they are autistic or not, are more able to respond to them appropriately, as well as to identify them in other people. It has not yet been confirmed whether autistic people have difficulties with emotional self-awareness, or if any reported difficulties are actually due to the way in which emotional self-awareness is measured in autistic people. If these difficulties do exist, it is also not known when these difficulties emerge. In this research, we reviewed 47 existing studies that measured emotional self-awareness in autistic and non-autistic adults and children. We also compared studies that measured emotional self-awareness in different ways. We found that autistic adults did seem to have poorer emotional self-awareness compared to their neurotypical peers. However, this was not the case with autistic children of age 12 years and below. Instead, differences in emotional self-awareness only seemed to emerge during adolescence. Moreover, these difficulties seemed to increase with age. These results suggest that difficulties with emotional self-awareness may not be inherent in autism. Instead, they may emerge alongside the greater social and mental health difficulties that are experienced by many autistic people during adolescence. We therefore suggest that it is important to find out more about, and subsequently support, the emotional self-awareness difficulties that autistic adolescents may encounter.
人们认为自闭症患者在识别和理解自己的情绪方面存在困难。这被称为……研究情绪自我意识很重要,因为无论是自闭症患者还是非自闭症患者,更能理解自己情绪的人更能适当地应对情绪,也更能识别他人的情绪。目前尚未证实自闭症患者在情绪自我意识方面是否存在困难,或者所报告的任何困难是否实际上是由于对自闭症患者情绪自我意识的测量方式所致。如果这些困难确实存在,也不清楚这些困难何时出现。在这项研究中,我们回顾了47项现有的研究,这些研究测量了自闭症和非自闭症成年人及儿童的情绪自我意识。我们还比较了以不同方式测量情绪自我意识的研究。我们发现,与神经典型的同龄人相比,自闭症成年人的情绪自我意识似乎确实较差。然而,12岁及以下的自闭症儿童并非如此。相反,情绪自我意识的差异似乎只在青春期出现。此外,这些困难似乎随着年龄的增长而增加。这些结果表明,情绪自我意识方面的困难可能并非自闭症所固有。相反,它们可能伴随着许多自闭症患者在青春期经历的更大的社会和心理健康困难而出现。因此,我们建议,重要的是要更多地了解并随后支持自闭症青少年可能遇到的情绪自我意识困难。