Autism Spectrum as an Empathy Disorder

Abstract

According to the DSM-V, the diagnosis of "autism spectrum disorder" requires the presence of at least three symptoms in the category of "deficit of social communication" and at least two in that of "repetitive behaviors." Children with autism, therefore, show a large deficit area of social communication, and most scholars agree that the lack of empathy figures prominently among these disorders. This work discusses the link between autism, empathy and perception – action process, according to neuroscientific evidences. The neuroscientific framework makes direct reference to a paradigm of perception/action that now appears permanently reversed with respect to the idea of perception-action that was dominant in the second half of the twentieth century, solidly hinged on cognitivist foundations and, in particular, on the computational metaphor. In this new paradigm, simply, perception is function of action.