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The Feeling of Me Feeling for You: Interoception, Alexithymia and Empathy in Autism.
Journal article

The Feeling of Me Feeling for You: Interoception, Alexithymia and Empathy in Autism.

  • Mul CL Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Anglia Ruskin University, East Road, Cambridge, CB1 1PT, UK. cari-lene.mul@pgr.anglia.ac.uk.
  • Stagg SD Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Anglia Ruskin University, East Road, Cambridge, CB1 1PT, UK.
  • Herbelin B EPFL Center of Neuroprosthetics, Campus Biotech Batiment H4, Chemin Des Mines 9, 1202, Geneva, Switzerland.
  • Aspell JE Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Anglia Ruskin University, East Road, Cambridge, CB1 1PT, UK.
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  • 2018-04-13
Published in:
  • Journal of autism and developmental disorders. - 2018
Alexithymia
Autism
Empathy
Interoception
Adolescent
Adult
Affective Symptoms
Autistic Disorder
Awareness
Emotions
Empathy
Female
Humans
Interoception
Male
Young Adult
English Following recent evidence for a link between interoception, emotion and empathy, we investigated relationships between these factors in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). 26 adults with ASD and 26 healthy participants completed tasks measuring interoception, alexithymia and empathy. ASD participants with alexithymia demonstrated lower cognitive and affective empathy than ASD participants without alexithymia. ASD participants showed reduced interoceptive sensitivity (IS), and also reduced interoceptive awareness (IA). IA was correlated with empathy and alexithymia, but IS was related to neither. Alexithymia fulfilled a mediating role between IA and empathy. Our findings are suggestive of an alexithymic subgroup in ASD, with distinct interoceptive processing abilities, and have implications for diagnosis and interventions.
Language
  • English
Open access status
green
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/global/documents/151213
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