Shalev I, Waller R, Wagner N J, Uzefovsky F
Psychology Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 1 David Ben-Gurion Blvd, Be'er Sheva, Israel.
Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2025 Jun 11. doi: 10.1007/s00787-025-02760-3.
Empathy, a socioemotional capacity with emotional and cognitive components, develops from infancy onward. An imbalance between these components, termed empathic disequilibrium, is related to socioemotional difficulties in adulthood, but how empathic disequilibrium changes across development and whether these changes relate to socioemotional difficulties, remain to be discovered. This study investigated changes in empathic disequilibrium with age in children aged 3 to 12 years and its associations with socioemotional outcomes. 303 children from the general population were assessed at three timepoints, four months apart. Parent-reported measures of cognitive and emotional empathy, along with socioemotional outcomes (conduct and emotional problems, callous-unemotional traits, and prosocial behavior), were analyzed. Considering within and between participant variability in age, we characterized empathic disequilibrium development, and examined whether socioemotional outcomes at the last timepoint moderated this trajectory. Empathic disequilibrium typically shifted from emotional-empathy dominance at age 3 years to equilibrium between ages 4.7 and 6.9. Afterwards, a trend toward cognitive-empathy dominance emerged, which declined during early adolescence. Children with socioemotional difficulties at the final timepoint showed distinct developmental patterns of empathic disequilibrium. Specifically, children with high emotional problems, callous-unemotional traits, and low prosocial behavior were less likely to achieve empathic equilibrium by age 12, with those showing high conduct problems reaching equilibrium later than their peers. This study illustrates how empathic disequilibrium develops from early childhood to adolescence and its links with socioemotional outcomes. These findings suggest that tracking empathic disequilibrium could help identify children who may benefit from tailored interventions.
共情是一种具有情感和认知成分的社会情感能力，从婴儿期就开始发展。这些成分之间的不平衡，即共情失衡，与成年后的社会情感困难有关，但共情失衡在整个发展过程中如何变化，以及这些变化是否与社会情感困难相关，仍有待发现。本研究调查了3至12岁儿童共情失衡随年龄的变化及其与社会情感结果的关联。对来自普通人群的303名儿童在三个时间点进行评估，时间间隔为四个月。分析了家长报告的认知和情感共情测量指标，以及社会情感结果（行为和情感问题、冷漠无情特质和亲社会行为）。考虑到参与者年龄的个体内和个体间差异，我们描述了共情失衡的发展情况，并检查了最后一个时间点的社会情感结果是否调节了这一轨迹。共情失衡通常从3岁时的情感共情占主导转变为4.7至6.9岁时的平衡。此后，出现了认知共情占主导的趋势，这种趋势在青春期早期下降。在最后一个时间点有社会情感困难的儿童表现出不同的共情失衡发展模式。具体而言，有高情感问题、冷漠无情特质且亲社会行为少的儿童在12岁时不太可能实现共情平衡，那些有高行为问题的儿童比同龄人更晚达到平衡。本研究说明了共情失衡从幼儿期到青春期的发展过程及其与社会情感结果的联系。这些发现表明，追踪共情失衡有助于识别可能从针对性干预中受益的儿童。
