Individuals with autism share others’ emotions: evidence from the continuous affective rating and empathic responses (CARER) task

Idalmis Santiesteban; Clare Gibbard; Hanna Drucks; Nicola Clayton; Michael J. Banissy; Geoffrey Bird

doi:10.1007/s10803-020-04535-y

Individuals with autism share others’ emotions: evidence from the continuous affective rating and empathic responses (CARER) task

Idalmis Santiesteban^*, Clare Gibbard, Hanna Drucks, Nicola Clayton, Michael J. Banissy, Geoffrey Bird

^*Corresponding author for this work

Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A new task (‘CARER’) was used to test claims of reduced empathy in autistic adults. CARER measures emotion identification (ability to identify another’s affective state), affective empathy (degree to which another’s affective state causes a matching state in the Empathiser) and affect sharing (degree to which the Empathiser’s state matches the state they attribute to another). After controlling for alexithymia, autistic individuals showed intact affect sharing, emotion identification and affective empathy. Results suggested reduced retrospective socio-emotional processing, likely due to a failure to infer neurotypical mental states. Thus, autism may be associated with difficulties inferring another’s affective state retrospectively, but not with sharing that state. Therefore, when appropriate measures are used, autistic individuals do not show a lack of empathy.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	391-404
Number of pages	14
Journal	Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
Volume	51
Issue number	2
Early online date	28 May 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04535-y
Publication status	Published - Feb 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors wish to thank Dr Jeffrey M Girard for programming the CARER empathy task and Ella Belfield and Laura Didymus for assistance during early data collection. This work was supported by an Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) Grant awarded to IS [ES/N00325X/1]. MJB is also supported by an ESRC Grant [ES/R007527/1]. GB is supported by the Baily Thomas Charitable Trust.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Keywords

Affect sharing
Alexithymia
Autism
CARER
Continuous affective rating
Empathy

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Developmental and Educational Psychology

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10.1007/s10803-020-04535-y

Cite this

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abstract = "A new task ({\textquoteleft}CARER{\textquoteright}) was used to test claims of reduced empathy in autistic adults. CARER measures emotion identification (ability to identify another{\textquoteright}s affective state), affective empathy (degree to which another{\textquoteright}s affective state causes a matching state in the Empathiser) and affect sharing (degree to which the Empathiser{\textquoteright}s state matches the state they attribute to another). After controlling for alexithymia, autistic individuals showed intact affect sharing, emotion identification and affective empathy. Results suggested reduced retrospective socio-emotional processing, likely due to a failure to infer neurotypical mental states. Thus, autism may be associated with difficulties inferring another{\textquoteright}s affective state retrospectively, but not with sharing that state. Therefore, when appropriate measures are used, autistic individuals do not show a lack of empathy.",

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Individuals with autism share others’ emotions: evidence from the continuous affective rating and empathic responses (CARER) task

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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