Bridging the Gap (With Empathy).

Losh and Capps point to a critical and widely accepted notion in proper emotional and social development. In a neuro-typical individual, “advances in emotional understanding occur as children are increasingly able and inclined to locate emotions within causal–explanatory frameworks and evaluate their significance in relation to self and other.” The authors go on to argue that “the development of such evaluative skills has been argued to be a key factor in the enabling of children to penetrate the psychological and sociocultural dimensions of complex affective encounters.” Thus it is the acquisition of these increasingly complex abilities that is lacking in autistic individuals.
Though this would seem to encompass the lack of empathy long assumed to be a hallmark of both Kanner’s and Asperger’s autism, such a definition circumvents the slightly caustic ring of former classifications. I use the word caustic here, because to claim another individual lacks empathy sounds (at least to me) somewhat accusatory.
Perhaps this is a case of cue distortion on my party, but given that a lack of empathy is also a hallmark of the antisocial personality disorders, the connotation feels a bit negative.
I find it preferable, therefore, to conceive of the undeniable emotional barriers faced by autistic individuals not as an absence of the very emotion that renders us human, but as a snag in his or her emotional development. Or, as Temple Grandin might put it, a short-circuit in the computer wires.
In reference to this, I think the work of Martin Hoffman is an appropriate parallel. In Hoffman’s view, empathetic ability increases as a direct function of developing cognitive awareness of others (Hoffman 1984). In simpler terms, as more complex mental capacities develop, so too does the capacity to engage in and experience empathy. In infancy (0-1 years of age), for example, only a rudimentary form of empathy exists, wherein a basic imitation of adult gestures—or, motor mimicry— is observed (Meltzoff 1977), as well as what Hoffman terms the “primary circular reaction” wherein newborns reactively cry upon exposure to other crying infants (Sagi and Hoffman, 1976). By contrast, in later childhood and early adolescence, “person identity” (the realization that others’ identities, opinions, personal experiences and emotions are not solely dependent upon oneself—and that they exist outside of immediate, observable situations) enables a more advanced (and abstract) understanding of others. Only when person identity is acquired, Hoffman argues, can individuals “take the other’s role and asses their reactions in particular situations [while] also generaliz[ing] from these situations and construct[ing] a concept of the other’s general life experience” (Hoffman 1984). By transcending early childhood fusions of self and other, and by refining the resulting perceptions of separate entities, a more complex and mature form of empathy is engendered.
In its entirety, Hoffman’s model of empathy comprises four distinct stages (of which primary circular reactions and person identity acquisition are associated with the first and last, respectively). As for the second stage (1-2 years of life), sympathy (in absence of the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes, as mandated by empathy) is made possible by the attainment of person permanence (the notion that people do not disappear when, say, they leave the room). Following this is the stage lasting from 3 to 10 years of age, wherein role taking (the ability to assume another’s perspective) develops, and thus empathy takes its first roots.
If this model is to be applied to autistic individuals, one might argue that—dependent upon the severity of their symptoms—they are prevented from progressing to the third and fourth stages of empathy acquisition, based on neurological hindrances. In other words, from a developmental standpoint that carries a hint of psychoanalytic theory (inasmuch as this might be mistaken to parallel Freud’s psychosexual stages—and this is by no means my intention), autistic individuals may be neurobiologically incapable of engaging in role taking, which is necessary for the more complex forms of empathy.
To me, this correlates with the “complex attributional processes hinging on later developmental achievements, such as the capacity for reflecting upon experiences
and evaluating them in relation to sociocultural norms and expectations, as well as the appraisals of others” that Losh and Capps refer to. In that sense, though it may seem somewhat tangential, Hoffman’s approach to empathy development might shed a more humanistic light on cases of autism. Not that I find them to elicit the negative connotations associated with antisocial personality disorder. But I do believe that there is a want of empathy in the neuro-typical population and their reactions to autism.
Not only is there a disconnection on the autistic individual’s part—as they can engage only limitedly in the emotional currency upon which otherwise normal individuals rely. There is also a critical lack of understanding on the parts of non-autistic individuals who, say, observe their neuro-developmentally impaired counterparts and cast them off as retarded or burdensome. Perhaps, then, if empathic connections are fostered on more basic, more rudimentary or earlier forms of empathy (as one would attempt to cultivate in youngsters who have not yet developed a person permanence or person identity), a greater communication between the two seemingly opposite worlds could be achieved.