Affective and cognitive empathy on the autism spectrum disorder (Asd): An integrative literature review

Abstract

Literature has shown a growing interest in studies on how empathy, regarding its cognitive and affective components, can be developed in people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Thus, this integrative literature review aimed to investigate empathy, in its cognitive and affective components, in individuals with TEA and associated factors. For this, a search for scientific papers was carried out in the PubMed, ERIC, and PsycINFO electronic databases. The keywords and Boolean operators Autism [or] ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) [and] Empathy were adopted. As a result, 180 publications were found, and 26 were analyzed. The inclusion criteria were empirical pieces of research – correlational and intervention – that addressed the relationship between empathy and ASD, indexed in the databases already mentioned between 2005 and 2020. The categories resulting from the investigation were: affective and cognitive empathy, gender differences in empathy, and differences related to age and Intelligence Quotient (IQ) in individuals with ASD. The studies showed that cognitive empathy, which involves the inference of emotion from another person’s mental state, can be reduced in people with ASD, while affective empathy, which refers to the ability to share the emotions of others, does not suffer the same deficit. In addition, some studies have pointed to the importance of teaching empathic responsiveness in children with ASD. No studies were found in Brazilian databases on the topic, signaling an important research gap on empathy in people with autism on the national scene.