Effects Of Emotional Situations On Cognitive Empathy In Children With Autism And Intervention Research

Cognitive empathy refers to the ability of individuals to recognize and understand the emotions of others,to clarify the thoughts and intentions of others,and to make reasonable assumptions.Deficits in cognitive empathy are one of the major contributing factors to social impairment in children with autism.Currently,there is a lack of understanding of the cognitive empathy abilities of children with autism.Previous studies have focused more on the cognitive empathy characteristics of autistic children’s expressions on isolated faces,ignoring whether emotional situations affect the cognitive empathy ability of autistic children.Therefore,the development of high ecological validity emotional situation materials to measure and evaluate cognitive empathy in children with autism is an important guiding significance for developing intervention programs to enhance empathy in children with autism.In this study,we first conducted interviews with parents and teachers of children with autism to identify emotional situations that are more relevant to the daily lives of children with autism,and developed a video library of emotional situations with more ecological validity.Subsequently,the evaluation materials were selected from the emotional situation video library to explore the effects of social emotional situations and non-social emotional situations on cognitive empathy of children with autism.Based on the results of the experimental study,an intervention study implementation protocol was designed.The intervention study used a crosssubjects and multiprobe multiple baseline designs in a single-subject experimental approach,using multiple exemplar training in social emotional and non-social emotional situations to intervene on the cognitive empathy of children with autism.Experimental intervention results show that:(1)The cognitive empathy of children with autism is weaker than ordinary children in both social and non-social emotional situations.(2)The cognitive empathy of children with autism was better in non-social emotional situations than social emotional situations.Specifically,in non-social emotional situations,the performance of autism children’s cognitive empathy ability in happy and angry emotional situations is better than sadness and fearful emotional situations;in social emotional situations,the performance of autism children’s cognitive empathy ability in happy emotional situations is better than sad,angry and fearful emotional situations.(3)The multiple exemplar training can effectively enhance the cognitive empathy of children with autism and maintain good generalization effects.(4)The effect of intervention on cognitive empathy in children with autism was better in non-social emotional situations than in social emotional situations.The findings suggest that situational sociality affects the performance of the ability of children’s cognitive empathy in social and non-social emotional situations.and that the intervention is effective in promoting cognitive empathy in children with autism through multiple exemplar training.