Empathy for others versus for one's child: Associations with mothers' brain activation during a social cognitive task and with their toddlers' functioning

Caregivers who are higher in dispositional empathy tend to have children with better developmental outcomes; however, few studies have considered the role of child-directed (i.e., “parental”) empathy, which may be relevant for the caregiver–child relationship. We hypothesized that mothers’ parental empathy during their child’s infancy will be a stronger predictor of their child’s social-emotional functioning as a toddler than will mothers’ dispositional empathy. We further explored whether parental and dispositional empathy have shared or distinct patterns of neural activation during a social-cognitive movie-watching task. In 118 mother–infant dyads, greater parental empathy assessed when infants were 6 months old was associated with more social-emotional competencies and fewer problems in the children one year later, even after adjusting for dispositional empathy. In contrast, dispositional empathy was not associated with child functioning when controlling for parental empathy. In a subset of 20 mothers, insula activation was positively associated with specific facets of both dispositional and parental empathy, whereas right temporoparietal junction activation was associated only with parental empathy. Thus, dispositional and parental empathy appear to be dissociable by both brain and behavioral metrics. Parental empathy may be a viable target for interventions, especially for toddlers at risk for developing social-emotional difficulties.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF PARENTAL EMPATHY WITH THE PECULIARITIES OF RAISING PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

Purpose. The article is devoted to the study of parental empathy and the identification of the relationship between this phenomenon and the peculiarities of raising children at the age period from 3 to 6 years. The article considers the essence and mechanisms of empathy phenomenon. It was found that the phenomenon of empathy has been studied by many scientists from different angles, creating their own concepts of understanding this phenomenon and its mechanisms, while emphasizing its importance. The phenomenon of empathy was considered as an emotional sensitivity to another, as a perception of the inner world of another person, as a penetration into the individual identity of the object of communication without losing understanding of oneself. The main mechanisms of empathy included decentralization, interpretation, emotional contagion, and identification. The role of parental empathy in relationships and interactions with the child that affect the child's development was demonstrated.Methods. An empirical study was organized and conducted based on a sample of 65 mothers and fathers aged 25 to 44 living in Ukraine who have their first or only child aged 3 to 6. Three psychodiagnostic methods were used to implement the study, namely: questionnaire of emotional empathy by A. Megrabyan and N. Epstein (1975), adapted by Yu.M. Orlov and Yu.N. Emelyanov; multifactor questionnaire by M. Davis (1980), adapted by T. Karyagina, N. Budagovskaya and S. Dubrovskaya (2013); questionnaire of emotional relations in the family by O. Zakharova (1996). Psychometric verification of the reliability and representativeness of the selected methods for empirical research was conducted.Results. The level of parents’ empathy and peculiarities of interaction with the child were determined, correlation analysis with interpretation of the obtained results was carried out. It has been proven that the higher the level of emotional empathy in parents, the higher the level of emotional intimacy with the child.Conclusions. It was found that parental emapthy is a necessary condition for positive emotional and educational interaction with the child, which has a significant impact on the child's development, communication and building relationships with other people in the future.Key words: empathy, parents, family upbringing, children, correlation, relationships. Мета. Мета статті –дослідити емпатію батьків та виявити зв’язок між даною властивістю та особливос-тями виховання дітей віком від 3 до 6 років. У статті розглянуто питання сутності та механізмів феноменів емпатії. З’ясовано, що феномен емпатії досліджувало багато вчених з різних боків, створюючи власні концепції розуміння даного феномену та його механізмів, при цьому підкреслюючи його важливість. Феномен емпатії розглянуто як емоційну чуйність до іншого, як сприйняття внутрішнього світу іншої людини, як проникнення в індивідуальну своєрідність особистості об’єкта спілкування без втрати розуміння самого себе. До основних механізмів емпатії віднесено децентрацію, інтерпретацію, емоційне зараження та ідентифікацію. Розглянуто роль емпатії батьків у стосунках та взаємодії з дитиною, які впливають на розвиток дитини.Організовано та проведено емпіричне дослідження, яке базувалось на вибірці з 65-ти матерів та батьків віком від 25 до 44 років, які проживають в Україні та мають першу або єдину дитину віком від 3 до 6 років. Методи. Для реалізації дослідження було використано три психодіагностичні методики, а саме: опитувальник емоційної емпатії А. Меграбяна та Н. Епштейна, 1975 р., в адаптації Ю.М. Орлова та Ю.М. Ємельянова; багатофакторний опитувальник М. Девіса, 1980 р., в адаптації Т.Д. Карягіної, Н.А. Будаговської та С.В. Дубровської, 2013 р.; опитувальник емоційних відносин у сім’ї О.І. Захарової 1996 р. Проведена психометрична перевірка надійності й репрезентативності вибраних методик для емпіричного дослідження.Результати. Визначено рівень емпатії батьків та особливостей взаємодії з дитиною, проведено кореляційний аналіз з інтерпретацією отриманих результатів. Встановлено, що більшість батьків мають середній рівень емпатії, якого цілком досить для гармонійного виховання дитини. Доведено, що чим вищий рівень емоційної емпатії у батьків, тим вищий рівень емоційної близькості з дитиною. Висновки. Встановлено, що емпатія батьків є необхідною умовою позитивної емоційної і виховної взаємодії з дитиною, яка має значний вплив на розвиток дитини, її комунікацію та побудову стосунків з іншими людьми в майбутньому.Ключові слова: емпатія, батьки, сімейне виховання, стосунки, кореляція.

Empathy and prosocial behaviour in early childhood: A review

The ability to empathise and understand others' emotions has been shown to have an impact on social interactions and prosocial behaviours. The objective of this review was to exploring the effect of parental empathy on the development of early childhood empathy and prosocial development. Seven databases were searched, including Medline, CINAHL, PsycINFO, the Cochrane Library, Pubmed, Science Direct and Google Scholar. A quality assessment rating showed studies relatively strong in methodology. The findings highlighted the association between empathetic parenting and the development of prosocial behaviour and empathy in early childhood. Research concluded that the quality of parental empathy was important alongside the increasing age of the child. Clinical studies would aid understanding into parental empathy, child empathy and prosocial behaviours.

4104 Development and validation of parental empathy analog tasks

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Parents’ empathy toward their children affects their parenting, which can in turn impact child outcomes. Although parental empathy is theoretically distinct from trait empathy, current literature relies on largely self-report measures of parents’ trait empathy. Thus, the current study evaluated new analog assessments of parental empathy. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: One parental empathy analog measure (Empathy Measure for Parents Analog Task, Emotion Script; EMPAT-ES) was created based on parents’ responses to open ended prompts describing scenarios that elicit different emotions (e.g., happy, mad, sad, scared) in children. These responses were used to create short scripts. A second analog task (EMPAT, Emotion Audio) was created using 20 sec audio clips of children expressing the different emotions wherein participants respond with how they feel hearing the emotions and separately, how they believe the child feels. After an initial pilot, both versions of the EMPAT-E were administered to 120 families enrolled in a prospective longitudinal study. Parents completed self-report measures of trait empathy and parental empathy, as well as the EMPAT-ES and EMPAT-EA analog tasks. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Internal consistency of both the EMPAT-ES and EMPAT-EA tasks are expected to be robust, demonstrating the reliability of these novel assessments of parental empathy. Results are also expected to demonstrate the construct and convergent validity of both analog tasks. These new measures of parental empathy are expected to be significantly associated with measures of trait empathy. Specifically, parents’ responses indicating how they believe the child feels in the analog are expected to be strongly related to their reported emotion recognition abilities and responses indicating how analog items made parents feel are expected to be related to parents’ empathic concern. Finally, parents’ responses to the analog tasks are anticipated to be strongly associated with parents’ self-reported parental empathy. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Valid, novel assessments of parental empathy can impact the parenting literature as well as community intervention and prevention efforts with parents. Such analog tasks can bolster parenting research but they may also be translated to the community setting as a training tool wherein parents are taught new skills that promote more positive parenting.