School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences & Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Department of Counseling Psychology, Social Psychology, and Counseling, Ball State University, Muncie, IN, USA.
Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol. 2024 Jul;52(7):1173-1182. doi: 10.1007/s10802-024-01176-y. Epub 2024 Feb 12.
The current study examined whether autistic children's perception of others' pain could be modulated by their first-hand pain sensitivity and theory of mind (ToM). We measured the first-hand pain sensitivity, the rating of others' pain intensity, and the performance in the ToM tasks in 43 5- to 8-year-old autistic and 30 neurotypical children. Our results revealed hyposensitivity to first-hand pain, underestimation of others' pain intensity, as well as difficulties in the False Belief subtasks of ToM in autistic children. Furthermore, we detected an interaction between children's first-hand pain sensitivity and ToM in predicting their perception of others' pain. To be specific, for autistic and NT children with normal or hyper-sensitivity to first-hand pain, better performance on ToM predicted higher ratings for others' pain intensity; while for autistic and NT children with hyposensitivity to first-hand pain, ToM did not predict ratings for others' pain intensity. Our study contributes to the understanding of pain perception in young children and provides implications for clinical practices to improve social understanding in autistic children.
本研究旨在探讨自闭症儿童对他人疼痛的感知是否可以通过他们的第一手疼痛敏感性和心理理论（Theory of Mind，ToM）来调节。我们测量了 43 名 5 至 8 岁自闭症儿童和 30 名神经典型儿童的第一手疼痛敏感性、他人疼痛强度的评分以及 ToM 任务的表现。我们的研究结果揭示了自闭症儿童对第一手疼痛的低敏感性、对他人疼痛强度的低估以及在 ToM 的错误信念子任务中存在困难。此外，我们还发现儿童的第一手疼痛敏感性和 ToM 之间存在交互作用，可以预测他们对他人疼痛的感知。具体来说，对于第一手疼痛正常或过度敏感的自闭症和 NT 儿童，更好的 ToM 表现预测对他人疼痛强度的更高评分；而对于第一手疼痛低敏感的自闭症和 NT 儿童，ToM 则不能预测他人疼痛强度的评分。本研究有助于理解幼儿的疼痛感知，并为临床实践提供了改善自闭症儿童社会理解的启示。
