Empathic responding in preschool-aged children with familial risk for autism.
Nicole M McDonald, Haley G Murphy, Daniel S Messinger
PMID 28608419WHAT IT FOUND
Preschoolers with autism showed less visible distress when an adult pretended to hurt herself, but helped clean up just as much as other children.
Parents of high-risk siblings without autism rated them as more empathic than parents of low-risk children.
Key findings
01Children with ASD showed less personal distress in response to an examiner's distress than both high-risk and low-risk siblings without ASD.
02Children with ASD provided help to an unfamiliar adult as often as children without ASD, showing no difference in observed prosocial behavior.
03Parents reported higher levels of empathic responding in high-risk siblings without ASD compared to low-risk children, with no difference between the ASD group and either sibling group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The number of children with ASD was small (n=12), which limits the power to detect differences, particularly for the trend-level finding in empathic concern. The observational task took place in an unfamiliar lab with an unfamiliar adult, which may have elicited anxiety or wariness in non-ASD children that masked their true empathic responses. Parent reports may be biased by comparisons between siblings, especially for high-risk families. The study did not measure cognitive empathy or physiological responses, limiting the understanding of the internal experience of the children.
Declared interests
Not reported in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the lack of visible distress in children with autism as a failure to understand the situation or a lack of empathy. The study found that these children helped just as much as their peers. The difference was in their emotional reaction (personal distress), not their prosocial action.