Empathic Accuracy and Cognitive and Affective Empathy in Young Adults With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder.
K McKenzie, A Russell, D Golm and 1 others
PMID 34052970WHAT IT FOUND
Young adults with autism tracked the intensity of anger in video clips less accurately than controls, but showed no deficits in tracking happiness, sadness, or fear.
They also self-reported lower perspective-taking, though experimental tests of recognizing emotions and feeling empathy matched controls.
Key findings
01Participants with ASD scored significantly lower in Empathic Accuracy for anger compared with typically developing controls, but did not differ in total empathic accuracy or accuracy for sadness, fear, or happiness.
02On self-report measures, the ASD group scored significantly lower on Perspective Taking and Empathic Concern than controls, with no significant difference in Personal Distress after correction for multiple comparisons.
03Alexithymia scores did not explain the deficits in trait empathy or empathic accuracy for anger observed in the ASD group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was underpowered for the Empathic Accuracy analysis because seven ASD participants had to be excluded due to viewing different video clips, reducing the ASD sample for this measure to 22. The power calculation was based on a previous study using a different empathy measure, which may affect the validity of the sample size estimation. The cognitive and affective empathy scores were binary (correct/incorrect), which may oversimplify these complex constructs. Ethnicity was not systematically collected, and all narrators in the video task were White British, which may limit generalizability.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The study was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that people with autism have a general deficit in empathy or emotional recognition. The study found no significant differences between groups in experimental tests of cognitive or affective empathy, nor in empathic accuracy for happiness, sadness, or fear. The deficit was specific to tracking the intensity of anger.