The comparison of empathic abilities and skin conductance in child and adolescents with specific learning disorder and healthy controls: A controlled study

Aim: Difficulties in perceiving nonverbal clues in children with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) have been shown in the literature. The number of studies to investigate changes in Electrodermal Activity (EDA) during detection of nonverbal clues is quite low. The aim of this study was to compare the emotional and behavioral difficulties of children with SLD in the control group, in terms of nonverbal communication skills, understanding emotions, EDA changes and response latencies measured during this time, and to compare the correlations of these changes in terms of empathy levels. Method:The study was designed as a cross-sectional, prospective study. Our study was carried out between July 2019 and September 2019 in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Clinics of Bolu Abant Izzet Baysal University Faculty of Medicine. Children with SLD were clinically diagnosed. Comorbidit psychiatric disorders were diadnosed with Kiddie - Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia Interview Inventory for School Age Children - Now and Lifetime Version Clinical Global Impression Scale (CGI), Learning Disorder Symptom Screening List, Conners Teacher Rating Scale, Conners Parental Rating Scale, KA-SI Empathy Tendency Scale (KA-SI EIE) Child Form, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and Sensing Skills Test of Nonverbal Clues (SSTNC) were used both groups and GSR / derman @ device was used for electrodermal activity measurement. In the study, "p" value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results:In this study, 31 children diagnosed with SLD and 31 healthy children were included in the study. The mean age of the SLD group was 10.50 ± 1.07 years; the mean age of the control group was determined as 10.06 ± 1.06. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of age, gender or sociodemographic variables (p> 0.05). When the groups were evaluated according to Conners parent and teacher rating scales, there was a significant difference between them in terms of teacher rating scale; but there was no difference in parental rating scale. In the evaluation of SSTNC results, it was seen that children with SLD had more problems in recognizing and interpreting facial expressions, postures and movements, tone of voice and emotions conveyed by nonverbal clues in social stories than the control group and the correct number of responses were lower in the SLD group (p values respectively 0.001; 0.001; 0.001; 0.005). Prolonged response latencies to picture, video, sound and story stimuli in SSTNC test were observed in the SLD group compared to controls (p values 0.001; 0.001; 0.019; 0.006). No statistically significant difference was found between the SLD and control groups in terms of EDA changes detected in SSTNC subtests. There was no statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of emotional empathy scores (p = 0.346) and empathic tendency scores (p = 0.127). There was a statistically significant difference in cognitive empathy (p = 0.05). Emotional empathy skills of the SLD group were lower in accordance with the literature. When the SDQ scores of the SLD and control groups were compared, there was a statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of peer problems (p = 0.002) but; there was no statistically significant difference in terms of other subscales (p> 0.05 for all). There was no significant correlation between EDA and CA-SI empathic tendency scale (p> 0.05). When the correlation between empathy levels and emotional and behavioral difficulties of children with SLD were examined; there was a statistically significant negative correlation between emotional empathy level, cognitive empathy level and total empathic tendency score and subscales of emotional problems, behavioral problems, attention deficit and activity problems; and there was a statistically significant positive correlation between emotional empathy level, cognitive empathy level and total empathic tendency score and social problems subscale Conclusion:In our study, non-verbal clues perception, empathy and emotional and behavioral problems were found to be higher in the SLD group than in healthy control group and these findings are consistent with the literature. In the SLD group, it was observed that the change in skin conductivity during non-verbal cues perception assessment was not different from healthy control group and our study was thought to contribute to the literature in this respect; however, further studies with larger samples are needed on this subject.