empathy Flashcards
Describe the three components of empathy presented in this chapter.
Experience sharing or the tendency of perceivers (indicates individual focusing on someone else) to take on the sensorimotor, visceral and affective states of targets (individuals on whom perceiver is focused on).
mentalizing which describes perceivers’ explicit reasoning about targets internal states using lay theories about how situations produce internal states.
Prosocial motivation is the understanding of perceivers’ desire to help one another,is a component of empathy as well as a consequence of experience sharing and mentalizing and can be considered a component of empathy that flows from mentalizing and experience sharing.
Describe the developmental trajectory of empathy in children.
Development (Experience Sharing versus Mentalizing)
-experience sharing as compared to mentalizing comes online earlier in ontogeny and remains more stable over the course of development.
- Almost immediately after birth neonates mimic facial movements like tongue protrusion. Thus, triggering a link between perception of “sharing” an action through imitation.
- Experience sharing is also seen in other facets such as the first week of life. Infants will become distressed when they hear other infants’ cries but not their own.
-At ten weeks old infants expand their imitative palette by responding congruently to adults’ emotional facial expressions ( Haviland & Lelwica, 1987).
- Mentalizing compared to experience sharing was understood to come into development around 3-4 however, recent research has shown that mentalizing comes on towards the first year of life to the second year. Thus sharing that mentalizing does not come on earlier that experience sharing even still
-Mentalizing exhibits a more continuous trajectory across early development than experience sharing.
-Researchers show that mentalizing develops only after basic psychological “building blocks’ fall into place
Describe malfunctions in empathy that can occur in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Psychopathy.
-Experience sharing with Psychopathy. Is able to understand others states but fail to share those states or exhibit typical neural resonance.
-Thus, producing a behavioral pattern of callous disregard for others well-being
-The ability to mentalize while unencumbered by experience sharing can be a recipe for socially manipulative behavior.
- Difficulties with Mentalizing with ASD
-individuals with ASD exhibit difficulties in mentalizing as well as altered patterns of activating brain systems associated with empathic subprocesses. They also reduce spontaneous mimicry, blunted engagement of relevant musculatures, and reduced mirror neurons system activity when observing target action.
-These deficits are not consistent with affect sharing and children and adults with ASD often exhibit levels of distress and concern in the presence of target suffering and demonstrate typical levels of neural resonance for affective states such as pain.
