Article 1: Lamport & Turner (2013)
This study examined the relationships of broader autism phenotype (BAP), empathy, and adult romantic relations in a sample of college students. As the studies on autism have increased studies have shown autistic-like characteristics in individuals. For this reason a nonclinical population with these traits has been termed BAP (Lamport & Turner, 2013). The autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with difficulties in social, communicative, and behavioral domains. Because autistic traits are present in BAP, individuals with BAP have shown signs of social and emotional difficulties. These individuals are less accurate at reading emotions and nonverbal signals. Many developing individuals with ASD experience
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The participants went through a series of tests. During these tests images of the brain were taken using an MRI. The tests showed ASD individuals where more sensitive to first hand pain then typically developing control (TDC) individuals (Fan et al., 2013). By examining the components of empathy scientists can get a better understanding of ASD. According to the results the ASD participants have normal sensorimotor responses (Fan et al., 2013). For ASD individuals the activation in viewing others’ pain was decreased but the response to making pain judgments was increased. This atypical sensory processing in ASD influences empathy processing. In social situations ASD individuals have an abnormal visual fixation pattern. ASD individuals will use avoidant patterns of attention to restrict any hyper arousal behavior in socioemotional situations. When testing cognitive emotional empathy ASD participants showed a disconnection between the …show more content…
The individuals had to read a context sentence then take a 30 second break before reading an inference sentence and then another break before answering a yes or no question (Mason et al., 2007). Images of the brain were taken during the test. This study found that individuals with high functioning autism showed more right hemisphere activity but found it more difficult to comprehend the passages then the control group (Mason et al., 2007). There was lower functioning connectivity in Theory of Mind with the autistic