Tracking emotions in the brain – Revisiting the Empathic Accuracy Task

Mackes, Nuria; Golm, Dennis; O’Daly, Owen; Sarkar, S.; Sonuga‐Barke, Edmund; Fairchild, Graeme; Mehta, Mitul A.

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.05.080

Cited by 52 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Across all participants, our findings suggest higher accuracy when rating the emotional valence of the negative videos (mean = .99, SD = .06) than the positive videos (mean = .73, SD = .06). These results differ from a recent study in which participants rated empathic accuracy according to the video's degree of emotional intensity (rating emotional arousal level) instead of valence; our study only examined emotional valence but not emotional intensity (Mackes et al, 2018). Our divergent findings are likely due to the different ratings schemes (rating intensity vs. valence).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 92%

“…Similar procedures to previous EAT studies were followed for calculating empathic accuracy ratings in order to maintain fidelity with previously reported results in other populations (Kral et al, 2017;J. Lee et al, 2011;Mackes et al, 2018;Zaki et al, 2009). Video 1 demonstrated very poor agreement for all participants and therefore was excluded from subsequent analyses (Video 1 average r = .01, SD = .14; Video 2 average r = .72, SD = .26; Video 3 average r = .41, SD = .40; Video 4 average r = .69, SD = .29; Video 5 average r = .74, SD = .12; Video 6 average r = .70, SD = .16).…”

Section: Empathic Accuracy Behavioural Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Empathic accuracy in adolescent girls with Turner Syndrome

Klabunde¹,

Piccirilli²,

Bruno³

et al. 2020

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Objective: Girls and women with Turner Syndrome (TS) demonstrate social challenges and difficulties identifying negative emotions, specifically fear. Previous studies suggest that social deficits in TS could be associated with theory of mind (TOM) difficulties or visual-spatial processing abnormalities. To further examine the potential mechanisms underlying social deficits in TS, we administered the empathic accuracy task, a naturalistic social cognition task. Method: The performance of 14 girls with TS was compared to 12 age-matched typically developing girls (ages 12 to 17) on an empathic accuracy task and a (control) visual-motor line-tracking task. Empathic accuracy was compared across positive and negative emotionally valanced videos. Results: We found that girls with TS differ from typically developing girls on empathic accuracy ratings for negative videos; no differences were detected for the positive videos. No between group differences were found on the control line tracking task. Conclusion: Our findings expand upon the previously detected affect recognition problems in TS to also include impaired detection of negatively valanced empathic interactions. Such difficulties for girls with TS could contribute to their social deficits and anxiety. Results from this study provide important information about gene-body-brain interactions and their influence on emotion processing and empathic accuracy during adolescence.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 92%

Section: Empathic Accuracy Behavioural Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Empathic accuracy in adolescent girls with Turner Syndrome

Klabunde¹,

Piccirilli²,

Bruno³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…In young adulthood, we imaged the brain's empathic response to others' emotions in the kangaroo care group and the controls, assessing how the brain sustains “empathic accuracy”, an important determinant of the empathic response 251,252 , and differentiates response to others' distress, sadness and joy. Using complex analysis, we detected three structures that showed highly dissimilar activations across emotions: the amygdala, anterior insula, and temporal pole.…”

Section: The Making Of the Resilient Child: Three Longitudinal High‐rmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is resilience: an affiliative neuroscience approach

2020

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Resilience – a key topic in clinical science and practice – still lacks a clear conceptualization that integrates its evolutionary and human‐specific features, refrains from exclusive focus on fear physiology, incorporates a developmental approach, and, most importantly, is not based on the negation (i.e., absence of symptoms following trauma). Building on the initial condition of mammals, whose brain matures in the context of the mother's body and caregiving behavior, we argue that systems and processes that participate in tuning the brain to the social ecology and adapting to its hardships mark the construct of resilience. These include the oxytocin system, the affiliative brain, and biobehavioral synchrony, all characterized by great flexibility across phylogenesis and ontogenesis. Three core features of resilience are outlined: plasticity, sociality and meaning. Mechanisms of sociality by which coordinated action supports diversity, endurance and adaptation are described across animal evolution. Humans' biobehavioral synchrony matures from maternal attuned behavior in the postpartum to adult‐adult relationships of empathy, perspective‐taking and intimacy, and extends from the mother‐child relationship to other affiliative bonds throughout life, charting a fundamental trajectory in the development of resilience. Findings from three high‐risk cohorts, each tapping a distinct disruption to maternal‐infant bonding (prematurity, maternal depression, and early life stress/trauma), and followed from birth to adolescence/young adulthood, demonstrate how components of the neurobiology of affiliation confer resilience and uniquely shape the social brain.

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“…The limitations of self-report measures of empathy like the IRI demonstrate the necessity of also assessing empathy using more objective measures when evaluating behavioral change in the context of social cognitive training. One skill especially important toempathy that researchers have developed an objective measure for is of empathic accuracy; specifically, how correctly the perceiver is able to infer the thoughts and/or feelings of another person in everyday interactions or simulations of those interactions (35). Empathic accuracy can be measured using a paradigm that includes a video-cued procedure comparing the perceiver's affective ratings of a social target with that target's self-report.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Change in Objective Measure of Empathic Accuracy Following Social Cognitive Training

et al. 2019

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Background: The capacity for empathy plays an important role in interpersonal relationships and social functioning, and impairments in empathy can have negative effects on social interactions and overall social adjustment. This suggests that empathy may be a critical target for intervention in individuals who struggle with social interactions, yet it is unclear if the skills required for empathy are malleable. This study investigates the efficacy of targeted social cognitive training for improving empathic skills. Methods: Forty-five individuals (mean age = 24) were included in this study. Twenty-four individuals were allocated to the active social cognition training group and 21 individuals were allocated to a computer games control condition. Subjects completed approximately 10.5 h of training over two weeks. Pre-and post-training, they completed measures of empathy and emotion recognition, including the Interpersonal Reactivity Inventory (IRI) and an empathic accuracy task. ANOVA and regression analyses tested changes in participants' performance on the empathic accuracy task and scores on the IRI subscales were used to assess the effect of the social cognitive training. Results: Repeated measures ANOVA show that there is a significant group by timepoint interaction on the Empathic Accuracy task, with individuals who completed the social cognition training showing a significant improvement in performance following training. There were no significant changes for either group on any of the self-report IRI subscales. Individuals in the active training group show significant improvement on negative valence videos and a trend towards improvement on positive valence videos. In addition, individuals in social cognition active training group who reported higher intrinsic motivation demonstrated greater improvement on the Empathic Accuracy task. Conclusions: Individuals who completed a computerized social cognition training program demonstrated improved performance on a rater objective measure of empathic accuracy while individuals who completed a computer game control condition did not demonstrate any significant changes in their performance on the empathic accuracy task. These results suggest that targeted training in social cognition may increase empathic abilities, even in healthy individuals, and that this training may be beneficial to individuals with social cognitive deficits.

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Tracking emotions in the brain – Revisiting the Empathic Accuracy Task

Cited by 52 publications

References 34 publications

Empathic accuracy in adolescent girls with Turner Syndrome

Empathic accuracy in adolescent girls with Turner Syndrome

What is resilience: an affiliative neuroscience approach

Change in Objective Measure of Empathic Accuracy Following Social Cognitive Training

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