Exploring the Role of Empathy in Understanding the Social-Cognitive Profile for Individuals Referred for Autism Spectrum Disorders Assessment in Adulthood.
Victoria Russ, Hanna Kovshoff, Tony Brown and 2 others
PMID 30051187WHAT IT FOUND
Adults referred for ASD assessment did not differ on emotion recognition or social inference tests.
Those with confirmed diagnoses reported more autistic traits and lower self-reported empathy. Self-report traits, not task scores, separated the groups.
Key findings
01Adults whose ASD diagnosis was confirmed and adults whose diagnosis was not confirmed did not differ significantly on tests of emotion recognition or social inference.
02Adults with a confirmed diagnosis reported more autistic traits and fewer empathic traits than adults without a diagnosis.
03The link between diagnostic group and emotion understanding was partly explained by self-reported empathy traits.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The sample excluded adults with an existing intellectual disability or severe or enduring mental health problems, so findings may not apply to those groups. The study did not obtain historical information about previous diagnoses, referrals or assessments. It is a single-service comparison of adults referred for ASD assessment, so the results need independent replication. The design cannot show that empathy traits cause social difficulties or that a diagnosis is due to lower empathy. The social-cognitive tests did not separate diagnostic groups, so they should not be read as standalone diagnostic markers.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that emotion recognition or social inference tests can identify adult ASD. In this referred sample, those test scores did not differ between adults with a confirmed diagnosis and adults without one. The differences were in self-reported autism traits and empathy.