The Empathy Imbalance Hypothesis of Autism--论文代写范文精选

移情是一种过程，影响人类社会行为。对自闭症来说，通常是交织与移情的研究,流行的理论认为,自闭症儿童，社会交际上存在很大的问题,然而假设还提议,患有自闭症的人有一个高度情感共鸣的能力。下面的essay代写范文进行详述。

Abstract
There has been a widely held belief that people with autism spectrum disorders lack empathy. This article examines the empathy imbalance hypothesis (EIH) of autism. According to this account, people with autism have a deficit of cognitive empathy but a surfeit of emotional empathy. The behavioral characteristics of autism might be generated by this imbalance and a susceptibility to empathic overarousal. The EIH builds on the theory of mind account and provides an alternative to the extreme-male-brain theory of autism. Empathy surfeit is a recurrent theme in autistic narratives, and empirical evidence for the EIH is growing. A modification of the pictorial emotional Stroop paradigm could facilitate an experimental test of the EIH.（essay代写)

Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder that continues to fascinate researchers, challenge clinicians, and distress affected families. Empathy is a set of processes and outcomes at the heart of human social behavior. Fascination with autism is often interwoven with the study of empathy because prevailing theory suggests that people with autism lack empathy. For example, according to Decety and Jackson (2004), “Children with autism . . . display a broad range of social communication deficits, and most scholars agree that a lack of empathy prominently figures amongst them” (p. 90). The empathy imbalance hypothesis (EIH) of autism, in keeping with the theory of mind hypothesis (Baron-Cohen, 1995), proposes that autism involves a significant cognitive empathy (CE) deficit. （essay代写)

However, the hypothesis also proposes, in contrast to prevailing theory, that people with autism actually have a heightened capacity for basic emotional empathy (EE). This combination of a CE deficit and an EE surfeit can be termed EE-dominated empathic imbalance. The purpose of this article is to refine and expand the EIH of autism. To do this, I first tackle some definitional issues and describe the origin of the hypothesis. I then argue that the EIH may help account for many psychological features of autism. 

Evidence for the EIH will include the following: (a) Children with autism show more facial affect than typically developing children in an empathy paradigm study, (b) the faces of adults with autism show heightened electromyographic responsiveness to other people’s expressions of happiness and fear, (c) children with autism show appropriate electrodermal responses to images of distressed people and sometimes refuse to look at such images, (d) adults with Asperger syndrome report high levels of personal distress in response to others’ suffering, (e) results from eye-tracking and physiological studies are consistent with the claim by people with autism that it is painful for them to make eye contact with others, and (f) practitioners and caregivers perceive some people with autism as being highly sensitive to the emotions of others. Finally, I suggest that a novel emotional Stroop paradigm could be used to test the hypothesis.

Defining Empathy and Autism
CE is the ability to understand and predict the behavior of others in terms of attributed mental states, particularly epistemic mental states such as believing, knowing, pretending, and guessing. Similarly, Blair (2005) wrote that the term CE is used when “the individual represents the internal mental state of another individual” (p. 699). CE is thus synonymous with theory of mind or mentalizing (Baron-Cohen, 2003; Blair, 2005). EE is an emotional response in an individual that stems from and parallels the emotional state of another individual. Similarly, Hoffman (2000) defined empathy as “an affective response more appropriate to another’s situation than one’s own” (p. 4). More recently, De Vignemont and Singer (2006) defined EE using four criteria: There is empathy if (i) one is in an affective state; (ii) this state is isomorphic to another person’s affective state; (iii) this state is elicited by the observation or imagination of another person’s affective state; (iv) one knows that the other person is the source of one’s own affective state. (p. 435).

Emotional responses that meet only the first three criteria are sometimes called emotional contagion, not empathy (e.g., see Bischof-Kohler, 1991; Eisenberg, 2000). However, the knowledge referred to in the fourth criterion is unlikely to be an absolute phenomenon, and, as Eisenberg and Strayer (1987) pointed out, “even young children may have some primitive understanding of the difference between their own and others’ affective responding” (p. 6). Pure emotional contagion can meet Hoffman’s definition of empathy, and a rigid distinction between empathy and emotional contagion is probably not viable (see Preston & De Waal, 2002). Some definitions of empathy combine CE and EE. According to BaronCohen (2002), empathizing is “the drive to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion” (p. 248). 

Notice that this definition presents CE as the first step in empathizing and EE as a second step. In this article, I distinguish between direct EE (i.e., spontaneous EE not derived from CE) and indirect EE (i.e., EE derived from CE). Direct EE can occur as a response to overt cues, such as another’s facial expressions or emotional vocalizations. Indirect EE depends on an understanding of another’s mental state and involves the ability to share an emotional state that is inferred but not observed. With direct EE, the empathizer may or may not be fully aware that he or she is sharing the emotion of another. (In other words, direct EE may or may not be complemented by some degree of CE.) Direct EE is particularly relevant to the sharing of basic emotions, such as happiness, sadness, fear, and anger. Indirect EE may involve basic emotions or more complex emotions, such as guilt and shame (although not all emotion theorists accept the distinction between basic and complex emotions; see Sloboda & Juslin, 2001). 

Davis (1996) distinguished between the parallel and the reactive affective outcomes of empathy. These reactive outcomes can be derived from EE (see Davis, 1996; Eisenberg, 2000) and include empathic concern and personal distress. Empathic concern (sometimes called sympathy) is a compassionate desire to relieve the suffering of another (e.g., Eisenberg, 2000). Personal distress is a self-oriented experience of discomfort that stems from another’s emotional state and often involves the observer feeling hopeless or incompetent in response to a target’s suffering. Returning to Baron-Cohen’s definition of empathizing, we can see that an appropriate emotional response could be either parallel or reactive, although it is clear that personal distress is much less appropriate than EE or empathic concern. More detailed guidance through the definitional minefield is available elsewhere (e.g., Davis, 1996; Eisenberg, 2000; Eisenberg & Strayer, 1987).

Autism is a lifelong disorder diagnosed in children who display a particular pattern of behavioral characteristics (e.g., Cooper, 1994). Warning signs of autism in preschool children include delayed language development, a lack of awareness of others, a lack of pretend play, and a failure to respond to the feelings and facial expressions of others (Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network, 2007). Children with autism fail to develop typical peer relationships and are impaired in their capacity to use nonverbal behaviors to regulate social interaction. People with autism often develop narrow or unusual interests and resist changes to their daily routines. Stereotypic patterns are an important feature of autistic behavior. Relatively severe cases of autism spectrum disorder are sometimes called classic autism. People with autism are described as high-functioning if they have an IQ in the normal range. Asperger syndrome appears to be a form of high-functioning autism that does not involve delayed language development (see Happe, 1994).（essay代写)

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