Empathizing, systemizing, empathizing-systemizing difference and their association with autistic traits in children with autism spectrum disorder, with and without intellectual disability.
Autistic kids lag in people-tuning, not system-love, so aim social-skills goals at the empathy side of the ledger.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Pan et al. (2022) asked parents to fill out three short surveys. The surveys measured how well their child tunes in to people, how much the child loves systems, and the gap between the two scores.
The sample included autistic kids with and without intellectual disability, plus typically developing peers. All children were between 6 and 12 years old.
What they found
Both autistic groups scored lower on people-tuning than the typical group. They also scored lower on system-love, a twist that past adult studies did not show.
Only the people-tuning gap, not system-love, tracked with more autistic traits. In plain words, the social side mattered, the mechanical side did not.
How this fits with other research
Lawson et al. (2004) first showed the low-people, high-system pattern in adults with Asperger’s. Ning’s child data keeps the low-people part but drops the high-system part, so the adult rule does not fully travel downward in age.
Simantov et al. (2024) looks like a contradiction. They found autistic teens self-reported typical empathy when asked directly. The gap disappears once you see Tslil used teen self-ratings while Ning used parent ratings and included kids with ID. Different reporters, different samples, different story.
Newbigin et al. (2016) watched high-functioning 8- to 12-year-olds in a lab. The kids showed normal concern when someone acted hurt, backing the idea that empathy can look fine in live action even when questionnaires flag a gap.
Why it matters
Stop assuming every autistic client is a “systemizer.” Build lessons around social tuning, joint attention, and emotion sharing instead of Lego sorting or train schedules. If you use the E-S profile, track the gap score, not the system score, and always ask who filled out the form—parent reports can paint a different picture than self-reports or live probes.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Empathizing, systemizing, and empathizing-systemizing difference can be linked to autistic traits in the general adult population and those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but these profiles and associations remain unclear in children with ASD, with and without intellectual disability (ASD + ID; ASD-noID). We recruited three groups including 160 boys with ASD (73 ASD + ID; 87 ASD-noID) and 99 typically developing (TD) boys (6-12 years). We measured empathizing, systemizing, and empathizing-systemizing difference using the parent-reported child Empathy and Systemizing Quotient (EQ-C/SQ-C). We measured autistic traits using the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS). Among the three groups, children with ASD + ID and ASD-noID scored lower on the EQ-C and SQ-C than TD children (all p < 0.001). There was no difference in the EQ-C between children with ASD + ID and ASD-noID (16.59 ± 5.53 vs. 16.23 ± 5.85, p = 0.973), and the difference in the SQ-C attenuated to null when adjusting for intelligence between children with ASD-noID and TD children (18.89 ± 7.80 vs. 24.15 ± 6.73, p = 0.089). Children with ASD + ID scored higher on empathizing-systemizing difference than TD children but lower than children with ASD-noID (all p < 0.05). Negative associations between EQ-C and all autistic traits, null associations between SQ-C and all autistic traits, and positive associations between empathizing-systemizing difference and all autistic traits were found in all groups. We observed differences in empathizing, systemizing, and empathizing-systemizing difference and the consistency of their associations with autistic traits among the three groups. Our findings provide implication that behavioral interventions of ASD should consider the balance of empathizing and systemizing. LAY SUMMARY: We examined the profiles of empathizing, systemizing, and empathizing-systemizing difference in children with autism spectrum disorder, with and without intellectual disability (ASD + ID; ASD-noID), and typically developing (TD) children aged 6-12 years. We observed differences in these profiles and the consistency of their associations with autistic traits among the three groups. Empathizing and empathizing-systemizing difference, rather than systemizing, were associated with autistic traits within the three groups. Our findings provide implication that behavioral interventions of ASD should consider these imbalance profiles.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2022 · doi:10.1002/aur.2766