An EEG/ERP investigation of the development of empathy in early and middle childhood.

ABSTRACT: 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, show

SUBMITTER: Cheng Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6987874 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature