Simantov Tslil, Uzefovsky Florina
Psychology department, Ben-Gurion University in the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel.
Autism Res. 2024 Aug;17(8):1628-1639. doi: 10.1002/aur.3197. Epub 2024 Jul 17.
Empathy is the ability to recognize the emotions of others (cognitive empathy) and to share in those emotions while maintaining a self-other distinction (emotional empathy). Previous research often, but not always, showed that autistic adults and children have lower levels of overall and cognitive empathy than non-autistic individuals. Yet how empathy manifests during adolescence, a developmental period marked by physiological, social, and cognitive change, is largely unclear. As well, we aimed to compare self versus parents' perceptions regarding adolescents' empathy. To do so, parents (N = 157) of 10-16-year-olds (N = 59 autistic) and their children (N = 133) completed empathy questionnaires. Adolescents also completed a measure of mental state recognition (Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test; RMET) and parents reported on their child's autistic traits. The tasks were completed twice ~six months apart. We found that autistic adolescents reported having lower empathic concern and higher personal distress than their non-autistic peers, whereas parents of autistic adolescents perceived them as having overall lower levels of empathy. Performance on the mental state recognition task of autistic and non-autistic adolescents' was comparable. The gap between self and parent reports regarding adolescents' empathy was explainable by parent-reported autistic traits, mainly communication difficulties. Empathy remains stable across the study's two time points. Thus, the findings do not support previous views of autistic people as having less empathy and these are possibly explainable by informant effects.
共情是指识别他人情绪的能力（认知共情），以及在保持自我与他人区分的同时分享这些情绪的能力（情感共情）。以往的研究通常（但并非总是）表明，自闭症成年患者和儿童的整体共情水平和认知共情水平低于非自闭症个体。然而，在以生理、社会和认知变化为特征的青春期，共情是如何表现的，目前尚不清楚。此外，我们旨在比较青少年自身与父母对其共情能力的看法。为此，10至16岁青少年（其中59名自闭症患者）的父母（N = 157）及其子女（N = 133）完成了共情问卷。青少年还完成了一项心理状态识别测试（读心术测试；RMET），父母报告了孩子的自闭症特征。这些任务在大约六个月的时间里分两次完成。我们发现，自闭症青少年报告的共情关注较低，个人痛苦较高，而自闭症青少年的父母认为他们的共情水平总体较低。自闭症和非自闭症青少年在心理状态识别任务上的表现相当。父母报告的自闭症特征，主要是沟通困难，可以解释青少年自身与父母在共情方面报告的差异。在研究的两个时间点上，共情水平保持稳定。因此，这些发现不支持之前认为自闭症患者共情能力较弱的观点，这些差异可能是由信息提供者效应导致的。
