How Autism Influences Sympathy and Empathy with a Shift in Perspective
19th June 2020
People with autism can interpret emotions and feel empathy as well. There is a continual typecast that the children with autism are those individuals who lack empathy and cannot understand emotion at all. It’s factual that a lot of learners with autism don’t show emotion in approaches that people without the condition would distinguish. In this case, teaching professionals play a major role in helping the children with autism.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuro-developmental condition characterized by impairment in (a) reciprocal social interaction and communication and (b) restricted and/or repetitive behaviour or interest.
However, we have seen that there is a popular impression that people with autism usually lack empathy and cannot recognize a feeling...which is wrong. We became habituated of this concept several years ago. Well, empathy is basically defined as the aptitude to discover and understand another person’s circumstances as well as feelings. It allows us to interrelate successfully in the social world.
The Relation between Empathy and Autism
Well, one of the major features of autism is impairment in societal functioning as well as communication. People with autism are lacking in the aptitude to discover plus understand the feelings and beliefs and consequently, do not tend to react to these with appropriate emotion. However, this does not essentially reveal lack of compassion. It is a known fact that boys and girls show noteworthy differences in their neuroanatomy cognition and behaviour from an early age and therefore, the gender differences in the signs of empathy are also seen from birth. A lack of articulated sympathy or empathy may not be the consequence of a lack of emotion in someone who has autism.
Aspects of Empathy and Sympathy
Children with autism who struggle to show empathy and sympathy may have complicatedness with one or more of these:
- Identify the other person's beliefs
- Understand the other person's anticipations, dreams, and/or expectations
- Have the kit to verbally express empathic feelings
- Allocate an enlightening understanding that shows of empathy
There are several elements involved in showing empathy to others but the above-mentioned are the significant ones. People with autism face issues in these situations not just that they lack care. It’s just empathy and sympathy may not come as naturally as it may for others.
Can this be taught?
YES...it can be taught. The cognitive empathy can be taught to children with autism. The role-play situations bring forth the empathetic reactions and used a token system to reward the expected empathetic response. As a teaching professional, you can teach empathy to the children with autism by using different teaching approaches like modeling, prompting, and strengthening another person's emotions by apt phrases, quality of voice, facial expressions, as well as gesticulations. Along with these, the other behavioral therapies, including cognitive-behavioral therapy, have been revealed to be successful in improving emotional empathy.
Generally, a lot of the general public consider that autistic people don’t feel empathy and sympathy towards others. Nevertheless, the autistic people can certainly struggle with certain aspects of empathy, but that doesn’t signify they don’t feel it at all. Deeply committed to their family and friends, as a teacher you can help them by pursuing an online autism course as understanding them will give you a clear idea of how hard it is for them to give out these influential feelings.
