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. 2019 Oct;49(10):3956-3964.
doi: 10.1007/s10803-019-04080-3.

Trait Autism is a Better Predictor of Empathy than Alexithymia

Punit Shah  1 , Lucy A Livingston  2 , Mitchell J Callan  3 , Lois Player  3
Affiliations

Trait Autism is a Better Predictor of Empathy than Alexithymia

Punit Shah et al. J Autism Dev Disord. 2019 Oct.

Abstract

It has been proposed that atypical empathy in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is due to co-occurring alexithymia. However, difficulties measuring empathy and statistical issues in previous research raise questions about the role of alexithymia in empathic processing in ASD. Addressing these issues, we compared the associations of trait alexithymia and autism with empathy in large samples from the general population. Multiple regression analyses showed that both trait autism and alexithymia were uniquely associated with atypical empathy, but dominance analysis found that trait autism, compared to alexithymia, was a more important predictor of atypical cognitive, affective, and overall empathy. Together, these findings indicate that atypical empathy in ASD is not simply due to co-occurring alexithymia.

Keywords: Affective empathy; Alexithymia; Autism; Cognitive empathy; Empathy.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors declare no conflict of interest.

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