Alexithymia and autistic traits as contributing factors to empathy difficulties in preadolescent children
Date
2021-03-03Author
Speyer, Lydia G.
Brown, Ruth
Camus, Lorna
Murray, Aja Louise
Auyeung, Bonnie
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Speyer, L. G., Brown, R., Camus, L., Murray, A. L., & Auyeung, B. (2021) Alexithymia and autistic traits as contributing factors to empathy difficulties in preadolescent children. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-04986-x
Abstract
Recent evidence suggests that, contrary to traditional views, empathy difficulties may not be a core feature of autism; but are rather due to co-occurring alexithymia. Empathy, alexithymia and autistic traits have yet to be examined concurrently in children. Therefore, we examined the co-occurrence of empathy difficulties and alexithymia in 59 typically developing and 5 autistic children. Multiple measures (self-report, parent-report and a behavioural task) were used to evaluate empathy and to assess differences in self- and parent-reports using multiple regressions. Alexithymia was found to predict empathy significantly better than autistic traits, providing support for the alexithymia hypothesis. From a therapeutic perspective, results suggest autistic children who screen positive for elevated alexithymic traits may benefit from additional support targeting emotion identification.