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. 2018 Jul 27;13(7):e0198273.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0198273. eCollection 2018.

The Cambridge Sympathy Test: Self-reported sympathy and distress in autism

Rosemary Holt  1 , Jessica Upadhyay  2 , Paula Smith  1 , Carrie Allison  1 , Simon Baron-Cohen  1 , Bhismadev Chakrabarti  1   3
Affiliations

The Cambridge Sympathy Test: Self-reported sympathy and distress in autism

Rosemary Holt et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Difficulties with aspects of social interaction, including empathy, comprise a core symptom of autism spectrum conditions (autism). Sympathy is a specific form of empathy and involves both cognitive and affective empathy. Data are presented from a new task of self-reported sympathy and personal distress.

Methods: Participants with autism (93 males; 161 females) and controls (40 males, 93 females) took part in an online survey via the Autism Research Centre or Cambridge Psychology websites. Participants completed a task where they were asked to rate photographic images that were either of distressing, neutral or happy scenes, according to the amount of sympathy they had for the individual in the photo and the degree of personal distress they felt. All participants also completed the Empathy Quotient (EQ).

Results: Significant differences were found between the autism and control groups for both self-reported sympathy and personal distress, with participants with autism giving lower ratings than controls. Control females scored significantly higher than control males in both sympathy and distress. Sympathy and distress ratings in the autism group did not differ significantly by sex. EQ showed positive correlations with sympathy and distress scores.

Conclusions: Using a new measure of self-reported sympathy, we found that both males and females with autism gave lower ratings of sympathy when viewing people in distressing scenarios, compared to controls.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1
Upper image, example of distressing image. Lower image, example of a non-distressing image. Representative images are used in accordance with the copyright restrictions of the original images (photo credit: Pexels.com). Stimuli from the task are available on request.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Plots illustrating sympathy and distress means +/- 2 SE for autism and control groups stratified by sex.
Fig 3
Fig 3
Left panel: Scatterplot showing the association between EQ and self-reported sympathy ratings; Right panel: Scatterplot of association between EQ and personal distress ratings. Scores from the autism group are shown in blue. Scores from the control group are shown in green. A line of best fit is shown.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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