Cognitive empathy across the lifespan.
Liam Dorris, David Young, Jill Barlow and 2 others
PMID 35594529WHAT IT FOUND
Cognitive empathy peaks in middle adulthood and declines sharply after age 75, especially in men.
Female advantage persists across the lifespan. Adolescence shows a temporary dip. Use this to contextualize social cognition changes, not as diagnostic evidence.
Key findings
01Cognitive empathy improves across childhood, dips slightly in adolescence, matures in early adulthood, remains stable until late middle age, then declines, with a particularly steep decline in males over 75 years.
02Females performed better than males on cognitive empathy tasks at all ages.
03The most marked increase in cognitive empathy occurred between the 13-to-18-year age group and the 19-to-25-year age group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was a convenience sample of museum visitors, which is not representative of the general population. Visitors were slightly wealthier and more female than the national average. The study used a single, short-form measure of cognitive empathy. It did not assess other aspects of empathy or broader social cognition. The design was cross-sectional, so it cannot track individual changes over time. The sample size for the oldest age group (over 75) was small (n=43), reducing the precision of estimates for that group. The study did not collect data on potential confounders like IQ, physical health, or education level.
Declared interests
No specific funding sources or conflicts of interest were declared in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use these group-level norms to diagnose individual patients. The study reports average performance by age and sex, but there is wide individual variation. A low score in an older male is a statistical trend, not proof of neurodegeneration or a specific disorder without further clinical assessment.