Impairments in cognitive empathy and alexithymia occur independently of executive functioning in college students with autism

Abstract

Reduced empathy and alexithymic traits are common across the autism spectrum, but it is unknown whether this is also true for intellectually advanced adults with autism spectrum disorder. The aim of this study was to examine whether college students with autism spectrum disorder experience difficulties with empathy and alexithymia, and whether this is associated with their cognitive levels of executive functioning. In total, 53 college students with autism spectrum disorder were compared to a gender-matched group of 29 neurotypical students on cognitive and affective dimensions of empathy and alexithymia. In addition, cognitive performance on executive functioning was measured with computerized and paper-and-pencil tasks. The autism spectrum disorder group scored significantly lower on cognitive empathy and higher on cognitive alexithymia (both d = 0.65). The difference on cognitive empathy also remained significant after controlling for levels of cognitive alexithymia. There were no group differences on affective empathy and alexithymia. No significant relations between executive functioning and cognitive alexithymia or cognitive empathy were detected. Together, these findings suggest that intellectually advanced individuals with autism spectrum disorder experience serious impairments in the cognitive processing of social–emotional information. However, these impairments cannot be attributed to individual levels of cognitive executive functioning.

Associations among autistic traits, cognitive and affective empathy, and personality in adults with autism spectrum disorder and no intellectual disability or language delay

“…These ndings suggest that autism is profoundly related to de cits in cognitive empathy, especially perspective-taking ability. In support, previous studies of empathy in ASD suggested that in adults with diagnoses such as Asperger syndrome, there were impairments on the perspective taking scale and de cits trends in the fantasy and empathic concern scales on the IRI [3,8,9,10,11].…”

Trait Autism is a Better Predictor of Empathy than Alexithymia

“…Despite some of these interesting and potentially important findings regarding affective empathy, the inconsistencies within our study and in previous research indicates that it is most prudent to conclude that neither autism, nor alexithymia, are robust predictors of atypical affective empathy, especially when compared to their stronger associations with participant sex and cognitive empathy. This is supported by emerging evidence that, in clinically diagnosed people with ASD, neither autism, nor alexithymia, are associated with affective empathy (Ziermans et al 2018). Our data are therefore not consistent with claims that atypical affective empathy, where observed in ASD, is due to alexithymia (Bird et al 2010).…”

Emotional Arousal During Social Stress in Young Adults With Autism: Insights From Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability and Self-Report

“…In a study by Bölte et al ( 2008 ), a small group of adults with autism reported higher levels of experienced arousal when viewing neutral pictures and lower arousal when viewing sad stimuli compared to TD controls, which is suggestive of deviant awareness of emotional arousal in ASD. In line with this notion, studies looking at self-reports of individuals with ASD have found that they are generally less able to identify and describe their own emotions (Dijkhuis et al 2017 ; Hill et al 2004 ; Samson et al 2012 ; Ziermans et al 2018 ). It has also been shown that, compared to TD individuals, adults with ASD report higher levels of negative emotions but similar levels of positive emotions (Samson et al 2012 ) and in children and adolescents with ASD emotion dysregulation appears to be related to all core features of the disorder (Samson et al 2014 ).…”