Social Attention, Affective Arousal and Empathy in Men with Klinefelter Syndrome (47,XXY): Evidence from Eyetracking and Skin Conductance

Abstract

Individuals with an extra X chromosome (Klinefelter syndrome) are at risk for problems in social functioning and have an increased vulnerability for autism traits. In the search for underlying mechanisms driving this increased risk, this study focused on social attention, affective arousal and empathy. Seventeen adults with XXY and 20 non-clinical controls participated in this study. Eyetracking was used to investigate social attention, as expressed in visual scanning patterns in response to the viewing of empathy evoking video clips. Skin conductance levels, reflecting affective arousal, were recorded continuously during the clips as well. Empathic skills, i.e. participants' understanding of own and others' emotions in response to the clips was also assessed. Results showed reduced empathic understanding, decreased visual fixation to the eye region, but increased affective arousal in individuals with Klinefelter syndrome. We conclude that individuals with XXY tend to avoid the eye region. Considering the increased affective arousal, we speculate that this attentional deployment strategy may not be sufficient to successfully downregulate affective hyper-responsivity. As increased affective arousal was related to reduced empathic ability, we hypothesize that own affective responses to social cues play an important role in difficulties in understanding the feelings and intentions of others. This knowledge may help in the identification of risk factors for psychopathology and targets for treatment.

Identifying mechanisms that underlie links between COMT genotype and aggression in male adolescents with ADHD

“…Three clips depicting the emotions of sadness, happiness and fear were edited from cinematic films (van Rijn, Barendse, van Goozen, & Swaab, 2014). Given previous findings (e.g.…”

“…Given previous findings (e.g. Jones, Happe, Gilbert, Burnett, & Viding, 2010) highlighting the dissociation of empathy into ‘feeling’/‘resonating’ with another's emotions (affective empathy) versus correctly identifying emotions in others (cognitive empathy), both constructs were assessed using previously published methods (see Van Rijn et al., 2014). After each clip participants completed a questionnaire concerning the recognition of the emotions of the main character (cognitive empathy) and their own emotions while viewing the clip (affective empathy), they were also asked to explain the reason for the emotion (‐s) identified in the main character and themselves.…”

“…These responses were coded separately for cognitive and affective empathy using a scoring system which took into consideration four elements of empathy: (a) the correct target emotion, (b) other similar and relevant emotions, (c) the intensity of the emotion, and (d) the explanation for the causes of the emotion. Cognitive and affective empathy scores were calculated for each clip and ranged from 0 to 6 (van Rijn et al., 2014). For both scales, a higher score is indicative of greater empathy.…”

Affective empathy, cognitive empathy and social attention in children at high risk of criminal behaviour

“…The target emotions in these clips were fear (103 s), happiness (87 s) and pain (101 s). The three clips were derived from existing movies (for details, see Van Rijn, Barendse, van Goozen, & Swaab, 2014).…”

The nature of social cognitive deficits in children and adults with Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY)

“…5,8 Two recent eyetracking studies showed that men with XXY attended less to faces, and had a reduced tendency to first look at the eyes of others. 9,10 Successful social interaction and adaptive functioning in social context heavily relies on the abilities to process information from faces. During any encounter, it is crucial to be able to quickly "read" faces of others, based on which one can organize social responses.…”