Examining the relationship between cognitive empathy, affective empathy and social anxiety in autism spectrum disorder

The main aim of the current study is to examine the relationship between cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and social anxiety in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) via self-report and parent-report. For this purpose, 38 children and adolescents with ASD, 38 control participants matching on age and gender, and their caregivers were recruited from special education and rehabilitation centres and public schools. The Eyes Test, Basic Empathy Scale, Empathy, and Systemizing Quotient, The Revised Child Anxiety Subscale were applied to participants. As a result of correlation analyses, it was found that affective empathy is increasing in children and adolescents with ASD, anxiety and social anxiety are also increasing. For the control group, while cognitive empathy is increasing, anxiety and social anxiety are decreasing without effects of age and gender and the age of the control group is negatively correlated with affective empathy. As a result of linear regression analyses, while affective empathy positively predicts anxiety and social anxiety in ASD and anxiety is the mediator factor in the relationship between social anxiety and affective empathy, cognitive empathy significantly negatively predicts anxiety and social anxiety in the control group. In terms of parent-report, there is no relationship between empathizing, anxiety and social anxiety in ASD; however, the moderate negative relationship between empathizing, social anxiety and anxiety was found in the control group. As a result of t-test analyses, while children and adolescents with ASD have significantly lower scores in cognitive empathy and The Eyes Test, they did not show significant differences in affective empathy, anxiety and social anxiety from the control group. Comparing self-report and parent-report, significant differences were found in anxiety and social anxiety. Means of self-report were significantly higher than the means of parent-report. Findings of the study, contributions to the literature and limitations were discussed.