The effect of being imitated on empathy for pain in adults with high-functioning autism: Disturbed self-other distinction leads to altered empathic responding.

De Coster et al. (2018) tested 24 high-functioning adults with autism. They watched videos of hands getting hurt while their brain waves were recorded.

Half the adults were copied by the experimenter for five minutes before the videos. The other half were not copied. The team looked for changes in empathy brain signals.

At first, the autism group showed weak empathy signals when seeing pain. After being copied, their brain and skin responses grew stronger and matched typical adults.

Being imitated seemed to fix the self-other gap that blocks empathy in autism. The boost lasted about 30 minutes.

Weinmann et al. (2023) extends these results. They show autistic adults struggle to switch between their own view and another person's view during false-belief tasks. Together the studies point to a flexible self-other system that can be trained.

Cari-Léne et al. (2019) also extends the work. They found weaker body-ownership illusions and tighter personal space in the same population. The three papers paint a picture of bodily and social self-boundaries that are both altered and plastic.

McGarty et al. (2018) looks like a contradiction but isn't. They report normal self-bias in a simple picture task, yet Lize found disturbed empathy for pain. The difference is domain: basic perception stays intact, while emotion-sharing that needs self-other overlap is fragile.

You can use brief imitation to warm up empathy before social skills training. Copy your client's gestures, posture, or speech for two to three minutes, then move to perspective-taking or emotion-recognition drills. The small dose may unlock fuller empathy during the rest of the session.