The Influence Of Family Socioeconomic Status,Family Function And Parenting Style On Empathy Of Autistic Children

Empathy is the ability to respond to the mental state of others with appropriate emotions after discriminating the beliefs and feelings of others,and has an important role in interpersonal communication.For children with autism,the development of empathy is also conducive to the improvement of their social skills,which is an important ability in their socialization process.The Family is the main place for kids activities.Some elements of the family environment will affect the formation and development of children’s empathy.This mechanism of action also exists for children with autism.Therefore,based on describing the empathy of children with autism and the status of their families ’socioeconomic status,functions and parenting styles,this study focuses on the impact mechanism of empathy development.The research is mainly to investigate the main caregivers of autistic children through the "Socioeconomic Status Questionnaire","Family Function Scale(FACES III)","Parenting Style Questionnaire" and "Griffith Empathy Scale".Then select individual parents to conduct interviews based on the survey results to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of family factors on the development of children’s empathy.This study the show that:(1)The family socioeconomic status of children with autism is at a medium level;(2)The total family function of children with autism is at a medium level,among which the intimacy function is better and the adaptability is weak;The family function has significant differences in family origin and degree of disorder,and other variables were no significantly different;(3)The autistic children’s family parenting style scores highest on democratic factors;democratic factors and authoritarian factors have significant differences in the child’s gender and degree of obstacles;doting factors have significant differences in whether they are the only child or the age of the child;There are significant differences in the source of each type of parenting;(4)The development of empathy in autistic children is unbalanced,and the level of development of cognitive empathy is significantly higher than that of emotional empathy.Autistic children’s overall empathy and emotional empathy are significantly different in the source、gender、age and degree of the disorder,and there are no significant differences in the only child or not variables,while cognitive empathy differs only in the extent of the disorder;(5)Family socioeconomic status,family function,doting / democracy /autocracy of parenting style and empathy are significant correlation to each other;family socioeconomic status,family function and democratic factors,and autocracy factors can predict autism children’s empathy ability;Doting factors have a negative predictive effect on empathy;(6)There are significant mediating effects between family function and democratic parenting styles between family socioeconomic status and autistic children’s empathy;family function and doting / democracy /autocracy of parenting styles in family socioeconomic status and autism,respectively.Chain mediating effect between sympathetic children;(7)Through surveys and interviews,it was also found that family SES may not have a positive effect on ASD children;Moreover,when the family environment affects the development of ASD children’s empathy,it will also be affected by other factors such as the lack of professional knowledge of parents and the individual’s social ability,social attention bias and cognitive ability.Based on the above research results,in order to promote the development of empathy in autistic children,the research proposes relevant suggestions from two aspects of family function and parenting style.