Challenging Empathic Deficit Models of Autism Through Responses to Serious Literature

Chapple, Melissa ORCID: 0000-0001-6364-1479, Davis, Philip, Billington, Josie ORCID: 0000-0002-0632-612X, Williams, Sophie and Corcoran, Rhiannon ORCID: 0000-0001-8900-9199 (2022) Challenging Empathic Deficit Models of Autism Through Responses to Serious Literature Frontiers in Psychology, 13. 828603-. ISSN 1664-1078, 1664-1078

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Abstract

Dominant theoretical models of autism and resultant research enquiries have long centered upon an assumed autism-specific empathy deficit. Associated empirical research has largely relied upon cognitive tests that lack ecological validity and associate empathic skill with heuristic-based judgments from limited snapshots of social information. This artificial separation of thought and feeling fails to replicate the complexity of real-world empathy, and places socially tentative individuals at a relative disadvantage. The present study aimed to qualitatively explore how serious literary fiction, through its ability to simulate real-world empathic response, could therefore enable more ecologically valid insights into the comparative empathic experiences of autistic and non-autistic individuals. Eight autistic and seven non-autistic participants read Of Mice and Men for six days while completing a semi-structured reflective diary. On finishing the book, participants were asked to engage in three creative writing tasks that encouraged reflective thinking across the novel. Thematic and literary analysis of the diary reflections and writing tasks revealed three main themes (1) Distance from the Novel; (2) Mobility of Response; (3) Re-Creating Literature. Findings demonstrated the usefulness of serious literature as a research tool for comparing the empathic experiences of autistic and non-autistic individuals. Specifically, autistic individuals often showed enhanced socio-empathic understandings of the literature with no empathy deficits when compared to non-autistic participants.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	autism, empathy, literary fiction, creative writing, neurodiversity
Divisions:	Faculty of Health & Life Sciences Faculty of Health & Life Sciences > Inst. Population Health Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences > School of the Arts
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	07 Mar 2022 08:35
Last Modified:	16 Jun 2026 10:44
DOI:	10.3389/fpsyg.2022.828603
Open Access URL:	https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg...
Related Websites:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3150252
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