Motor, Emotional, and Cognitive Empathy in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Conduct Disorder
- PDF / 354,728 Bytes
- 19 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 51 Downloads / 238 Views
Motor, Emotional, and Cognitive Empathy in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Conduct Disorder Danielle Bons & Egon van den Broek & Floor Scheepers & Pierre Herpers & Nanda Rommelse & Jan K. Buitelaaar
Published online: 25 October 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012
Abstract It is unclear which aspects of empathy are shared and which are uniquely affected in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and conduct disorder (CD) as are the neurobiological correlates of these empathy impairments. The aim of this systematic review is to describe the overlap and specificity of motor, emotional, and cognitive aspects of empathy in children and adolescents with ASD or CD. Motor and cognitive empathy impairments are found in both ASD and CD, yet the specificity seems to differ. In ASD facial mimicry and emotion recognition may be impaired for all basic emotions, whereas in CD this is only the case for negative emotions. Emotional empathy and the role of attention to the eyes therein need further investigation. We hypothesize that impaired motor and cognitive empathy in both disorders are a consequence of lack of attention to the eyes. However, we hypothesize major differences in emotional empathy deficits between ASD and CD, probably due to emotional autonomic and amygdala hyper-responsivity in ASD versus hypo-responsivity in CD, both resulting in lack of attention to the eyes. Keywords Empathy . Autism spectrum disorders . Conduct disorder . Facial expression . Emotion D. Bons : E. van den Broek : P. Herpers : N. Rommelse Department of Psychiatry, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, the Netherlands F. Scheepers Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Medical Centre Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands J. K. Buitelaaar (*) Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, the Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]
Introduction Aims and Structure of this Review Empathy is the capacity to recognize, understand and share the emotional states of others (Decety and Moriguchi 2007) and is considered to be the cornerstone of genuine and reciprocal human relationships. Lack of empathy has been invoked as an explanatory mechanism in some psychiatric disorders, but foremost in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and conduct disorder (CD) (DSM-IV-TR, APA 2000; Blair 2005). It is still ambiguous which aspects of empathy are impaired in ASD and CD, what their neurobiological underpinnings are (Blair 2005; Riby et al. 2012; Wagner et al. 2012), and whether empathy is differentially affected in ASD and CD (Jones et al. 2010). So far, few studies have directly compared empathy in ASD and CD (Downs and Smith 2004; Jones et al. 2010; Schwenck et al. 2012). Therefore, the main aim of this systematic review is to compare the overlap and specificity of motor, emotional, and cognitive aspects of empathy in children and adolescents with ASD or CD. Knowledge of differences in empathy deficits may be of help differentiating between ASD and CD i
Data Loading...
