Toward feeling, understanding, and caring: The development of empathy in young autistic children
Authors: Li Boya , Blijd-Hoogewys Els , Stockmann Lex , Vergari Ilaria , Rieffe Carolien 
Published: August 2022

Autistic people are often portrayed as lacking empathy. Yet they are not indifferent to others’ feelings. To advance our understanding of the early development of empathy in autistic children, this longitudinal study followed the development of four empathy abilities: emotion contagion, attention to others, emotion acknowledgment, and prosocial actions, in 1- to 6-year-old autistic children ( N = 61; Mage = 55.49 months), in comparison with non-autistic peers ( N = 145; Mage = 52.16 months). Once a year, for 4 consecutive years, children’s empathic reactions were evaluated by experimenters who acted out emotional episodes to elicit empathy in children, and by parents who filled out empathy questionnaires. We confirmed autistic children’s difficulty attending to others, acknowledging others’ emotions, and initiating prosocial actions. However, according to parents, they did not differ from non-autistic children in emotion contagion with others’ negative emotions. Notably, autistic children showed a greater increase in prosocial actions over time than their non-autistic peers. We discussed how to interpret these findings in light of the “double empathy problem,” and stressed the importance of removing the stereotypical view of autism. Furthermore, this study was among the first to show that autistic children have the potential to learn and to improve empathy skills.

Lay abstract

Empathy is a highly valued human capacity. Yet, autistic people are often portrayed as lacking in empathy. Recent research, which views empathy as a complex construct emerging from multiple interrelated emotional and cognitive processes, argues that, although many autistic people do have difficulty understanding others’ emotions, and this may hinder them from responding to others in a prosocial manner, they are not indifferent to other people’s feelings. Hoping to contribute to a better understanding of the unique challenges that autistic children face in their empathy development, we followed the development of four empathy abilities: emotion contagion, attention to others, emotion acknowledgment, and prosocial actions, in 1- to 6-year-old autistic children, in comparison with non-autistic children. Once a year, for 4 consecutive years, children’s empathy abilities were evaluated by experimenters who acted out emotional episodes to provoke empathy in children, and by parents who filled out empathy questionnaires. We found that autistic children experienced indeed more difficulty attending to others, acknowledging others’ emotions, and initiating prosocial actions toward others. However, according to parents, they did not differ from their non-autistic peers in feeling along with others’ negative emotions. This indicates that it might not be the case that autistic children did not want to act empathetically toward others. Rather, they might not know how to do so. Notably, despite these difficulties, when looking at children’s developmental trajectories, autistic children showed similar improvements over time as non-autistic children. This provides evidence that autistic children have the potential to learn and to improve their empathy skills.