Year: 2024
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Previous research has found that compared with hearing individuals, deaf individuals have similar level in emotional empathy, but there are significant lower level in cognitive empathy. However, these studies have certain limitations both in terms of research methods and research content. This study assessed the trait and state empathy of deaf individuals through questionnaires and the social exclusion empathy paradigm respectively, aiming to explore the empathy ability of deaf individuals and the visual attention characteristics and neural mechanisms in the processing of empathic information. The questionnaire used the Interpersonal Reactivity Index-C (IRI-C), which can be used to assess the trait empathy. When completing the social exclusion empathy task, participants needed to judge whether the target person in the social inclusion/exclusion pictures was psychologically uncomfortable. During the experiment, their EEG and eye movement data were recorded simultaneously. The questionnaire survey found that compared with hearing individuals, deaf individuals scored significantly lower on the Empathic Concern and Fantasy dimensions of the IRI-C, which suggests that deaf individuals have significantly lower levels of trait emotional empathy and trait cognitive empathy. Analysis of eye movement data in the social exclusion empathy task found that: (1) Compared with participants in the hearing group, the average duration of fixations of deaf participants was significantly shorter. This suggests to us that compared with hearing individuals, deaf individuals’ processing depth is significantly shallower each time they fixate on a picture; (2) The percentage of facial fixations of deaf participants is significantly higher than that of the hearing participants. This indicated that deaf individuals obtain social interaction information more from the target person′s facial expressions than hearing people. Analysis of EEG data in the social exclusion empathy task found that: (1) Deaf individuals have significantly higher N1 and P3 amplitudes compared with hearing individuals; (2) LPC amplitude evoked by social exclusion pictures in deaf participants was significantly higher than that in the hearing individuals. This suggests that deaf individuals exhibit significantly stronger state emotional empathic responses and devote more mental processing resources to stimulus categorization assessments. Moreover, these above-mentioned cortical responses of deaf individuals are closely related to their unique visual attention characteristics which were revealed through the eye-tracking data. In the current study, we found the following conclusions. Firstly, deaf individuals showed significantly lower trait emotional empathy and higher state emotional empathic responses. The above inconsistency may be related to the fact that trait emotional empathy and state emotional empathy rely on different cognitive processing processes and the visual attention characteristics of deaf individuals. Secondly, deaf individuals showed significantly lower trait cognitive empathy, and spent relatively more psychological resources in the stimulus cognitive evaluation stage related to state cognitive empathy. The above results show that deaf individuals have significantly lower trait emotional and cognitive empathy abilities, and in the processing of empathic information, they show significantly stronger automatic emotional reactions and higher psychological processing resources. These results can not only deepen our understanding of the social pain empathy ability and characteristics of deaf people, but also help improve the mental health and social functions of the deaf group.
DOI: 10.1360/tb-2024-0356
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4402073753