Trait Autism is a Better Predictor of Empathy than Alexithymia.
Punit Shah, Lucy A Livingston, Mitchell J Callan and 1 others
PMID 31172339WHAT IT FOUND
Higher autistic traits were linked to lower empathy more strongly than alexithymia was.
The sample was adults from online sources, not a clinical autism sample, so it cannot answer how empathy works in autism care.
Key findings
01Autism and alexithymia were each uniquely linked to lower overall and cognitive empathy, and this pattern replicated in a second sample.
02A relative-importance analysis showed autism was a more important predictor than alexithymia for overall, cognitive, and affective empathy, and this ranking was reproduced in the replication sample.
03The affective empathy result was unstable: the first analysis linked alexithymia, not autism, to higher affective empathy, while the replication linked autism, not alexithymia, to higher affective empathy.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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 main sample was a general adult community sample, not a clinical autism sample, so it does not directly show how empathy works in people diagnosed with ASD. Empathy, autism, and alexithymia were all measured by self-report questionnaires, not by observed communication or clinical assessment. The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that autism or alexithymia causes empathy differences. Findings about affective empathy were inconsistent between the main analysis and the replication. The supplied text does not state the replication sample size.
Declared interests
Funding was provided by the Medical Research Council. The supplied text does not report author conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that alexithymia is unimportant for empathy in autistic adults. The study compared self-reported autistic traits in a general adult sample, not a clinical autism sample, and the affective empathy results were inconsistent.