From emotion resonance to empathic understanding: A social developmental neuroscience account

The psychological construct of empathy refers to an intersubjective induction process by which positive and negative emotions are shared, without losing sight of whose feelings belong to whom. Empathy can lead to personal distress or to empathic concern (sympathy). The goal of this paper is to addre...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Development and psychopathology 2008, Vol.20 (4), p.1053-1080
Main Authors: Decety, Jean, Meyer, Meghan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autism
Awareness
Babies
Behavior
Brain research
Child
Child & adolescent psychiatry
Child development
Child Development - physiology
Child, Preschool
Children & youth
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive ability
Developmental disabilities
Developmental Disabilities - therapy
Emotions
Empathy
Humans
Information processing
Interpersonal Relations
Mental Disorders - therapy
Motivation
Nervous system
Neurodevelopmental disorders
Neurosciences
Neurosciences - methods
Neurosciences - trends
Perceptions
Psychology
Psychology, Child
Social Behavior
Social interaction
Social interactions
Social Perception
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Summary:The psychological construct of empathy refers to an intersubjective induction process by which positive and negative emotions are shared, without losing sight of whose feelings belong to whom. Empathy can lead to personal distress or to empathic concern (sympathy). The goal of this paper is to address the underlying cognitive processes and their neural underpinnings that constitute empathy within a developmental neuroscience perspective. In addition, we focus on how these processes go awry in developmental disorders marked by impairments in social cognition, such as autism spectrum disorder, and conduct disorder. We argue that empathy involves both bottom-up and top-down information processing, underpinned by specific and interacting neural systems. We discuss data from developmental psychology as well as cognitive neuroscience in support of such a model, and highlight the impact of neural dysfunctions on social cognitive developmental behavior. Altogether, bridging developmental science and cognitive neuroscience helps approach a more complete understanding of social cognition. Synthesizing these two domains also contributes to a better characterization of developmental psychopathologies that impacts the development of effective treatment strategies.
ISSN:0954-5794
1469-2198
DOI:10.1017/S0954579408000503