Empathy and Anxiety in Young Girls with Fragile X Syndrome.
Jonas G Miller, Kristi L Bartholomay, Cindy H Lee and 3 others
PMID 34081299WHAT IT FOUND
Girls with fragile X syndrome reported higher empathy and anxiety than matched peers.
High cognitive empathy linked to lower separation anxiety. This suggests understanding others' perspectives may buffer against distress, offering a target for future support.
Key findings
01Girls with FXS had higher affective and cognitive empathy scores than the comparison group.
02Girls with FXS reported more severe separation anxiety than the comparison group.
03Higher cognitive empathy was associated with reduced separation anxiety symptoms in girls with FXS.
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 study was cross-sectional, so it cannot prove that cognitive empathy causes reduced anxiety. Participants missing anxiety data were younger and had lower daily living skills, limiting generalizability to this subgroup. The sample was small (60 participants for anxiety analysis), which may have reduced the power to detect other significant differences. Empathy was measured via parent report, which may be biased by parental factors. Findings apply only to girls; boys with FXS often have a more severe phenotype and may not show the same empathy profiles.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that high empathy in girls with FXS is always beneficial or that self-reported anxiety data is representative of all girls with FXS. The study excluded younger girls and those with lower daily living skills from the anxiety analysis, so findings may not apply to those populations. Additionally, the link between cognitive empathy and reduced anxiety is correlational and does not prove that increasing empathy will reduce anxiety.