TY - JOUR
T1 - An EEG/ERP investigation of the development of empathy in early and middle childhood
AU - Cheng, Yawei
AU - Chen, Chenyi
AU - Decety, Jean
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Chia-Chen Li for helping the data collection. Jason M. Cowell and Keith Yoder provided helpful comments on the manuscript. The study was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology ( MOST 103-2401-H-010-003-MY3 ), National Yang-Ming University Hospital ( RD2014-003 ), Health Department of Taipei City Government ( 10301-62-009 ), and Ministry of Education (Aim for the Top University Plan) (103AC-B4). Dr. Jean Decety was supported by grants from the John Templeton Foundation (The Science of Philanthropy Initiative and Wisdom Research at the University of Chicago).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - Empathic arousal is the first ontogenetic building block of empathy to appear during infancy and early childhood. As development progresses, empathic arousal becomes associated with an increasing ability to differentiate between self and other, which is a critical aspect of mature empathetic ability (Decety and Jackson, 2004). This allows for better regulation of contagious distress and understanding others mental states. In the current study, we recorded electroencephalographic event-related potentials and mu suppression induced by short visual animations that depicted painful situations in 57 typically developing children aged between 3 and 9 years as well as 15 young adults. Results indicate that the difference wave of an early automatic component (N200), indexing empathic arousal, showed an age-related decrease in amplitude. In contrast, the difference wave of late-positive potentials (LPP), associated with cognitive appraisal, showed an age-related gain. Only early LPP was detected in children, whereas both early and late LPP were observed in adults. Furthermore, as compared with adults, children showed stronger mu suppression when viewing both painful and non-painful stimuli. These findings provide neurophysiological support for the development of empathy during childhood, as indicated by a gradual decrease in emotional arousal and an increase in cognitive appraisal with age.
AB - Empathic arousal is the first ontogenetic building block of empathy to appear during infancy and early childhood. As development progresses, empathic arousal becomes associated with an increasing ability to differentiate between self and other, which is a critical aspect of mature empathetic ability (Decety and Jackson, 2004). This allows for better regulation of contagious distress and understanding others mental states. In the current study, we recorded electroencephalographic event-related potentials and mu suppression induced by short visual animations that depicted painful situations in 57 typically developing children aged between 3 and 9 years as well as 15 young adults. Results indicate that the difference wave of an early automatic component (N200), indexing empathic arousal, showed an age-related decrease in amplitude. In contrast, the difference wave of late-positive potentials (LPP), associated with cognitive appraisal, showed an age-related gain. Only early LPP was detected in children, whereas both early and late LPP were observed in adults. Furthermore, as compared with adults, children showed stronger mu suppression when viewing both painful and non-painful stimuli. These findings provide neurophysiological support for the development of empathy during childhood, as indicated by a gradual decrease in emotional arousal and an increase in cognitive appraisal with age.
KW - Childhood
KW - Development
KW - EEG
KW - Empathy
KW - ERP
KW - Mu suppression
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U2 - 10.1016/j.dcn.2014.08.012
DO - 10.1016/j.dcn.2014.08.012
M3 - Article
C2 - 25261920
AN - SCOPUS:84907690625
SN - 1878-9293
VL - 10
SP - 160
EP - 169
JO - Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
JF - Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
ER -