Convergence between physiological, facial and verbal self‐report measures of affective empathy in children

Abstract

The present study investigated the degree of convergence between three different measures of vicarious affective responsiveness (affective empathy) - verbal self-report, facial expression and change in heart rate - in typically developing children (N=29, aged 8-10 years), when presented with an emotionally evocative film. Although convergence between physiological and verbal measures was only at chance levels, convergence between facial and physiological measures, and between facial and verbal measures was statistically significant, but low (=0.30 and 0.22, respectively, p<0.01). These findings have important implications for the assessment of empathy in children and indicate that generalization of results across methods should be undertaken with caution

Physiologically-Indexed and Self-Perceived Affective Empathy in Conduct-Disordered Children High and Low on Callous-Unemotional Traits

“…The preliminary findings of the present study, if replicated, extend the results of the study by Anastassiou-Hadjicharalambous and Warden [23] for typically-developing children, to CD populations. Taken together, these findings suggest that indirect self-reports do not adequately tap the capacity for vicarious arousal in children, at least in this age range.…”

“…The most evocative episode within this sequence of events was identified with the assistance of 15 postgraduate psychology students, and 15 typically developing children (aged 8-10) who unanimously selected the final storm, thunder and broken glass episode, the duration of which was 8 s. These 30 judges were also requested to label Ben's emotional response in this final episode, and they unanimously said that he was scared. This film has been piloted and used in previous investigations of children's vicarious responsiveness, with a similar age group, and has been found to elicit the predicted vicarious affective responses [23].…”

“…Indeed, there is a growing body of empirical data to support consistent neurophysiological correlates of vicariously-induced affect [22]. HR acceleration as a marker of directly or vicariouslyinduced affect has been well documented across numerous early and recent investigations [23][24][25][26][27]. HR can therefore be used to provide more direct evidence of whether affect has been aroused in an observer.…”

Oxytocin increases attention to the eyes and selectively enhances self-reported affective empathy for fear

“…The limitations associated with particular measures of affective empathy suggest that no single measurement is perfect. Studies examining the convergence between different measures of affective empathy show that some measurements, such as self-report measures and facial responsiveness, correlate with each other (Anastassiou-Hadjicharalambous & Warden, 2007), suggesting there is a common construct that is tapped by each measure. This points to the importance of measuring affective empathy using a multi-method approach to examine whether OXT enhances different components of affective empathy.…”

Heart to heart: Connecting empathy, attachment, and physiology.

“…Another study addressing the relationships between measures of affective empathy in children found that although the relationship between self-report and physiological measures was inconclusive, there was a relationship between verbal and facial measures and facial and physiological measures (Anastassiou-Hadjicharalambous & Warden, 2007). The authors noted that the discrepancy in the results could be due to developmental and age issues (i.e., limited emotional vocabulary) in researching children or methodological issues (i.e., measuring HR during the presentation of stimuli and then doing a reflective self-report; AnastassiouHadjicharalambous & Warden).…”