The Relationship Between Social Skills and Sensory Profile, Emotion Regulation, and Empathizing/Systemizing in Adolescents on the Autism Spectrum.
Empathy plus systemizing, not emotion-regulation tricks, predict social-skill levels in autistic adolescents.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Sezen and colleagues asked 120 autistic and 120 typical teens to fill out four short surveys. They measured empathy, systemizing, emotion regulation, sensory seeking, and social skills.
Then they ran a regression to see which traits best predict social-skill scores in each group.
What they found
Empathy and systemizing, not emotion-regulation tricks, drove social skills in both groups. Two sensory patterns—low registration and sensation seeking—also helped predict scores.
In plain words: teens who could feel with others and build rule-based systems also had stronger everyday social skills.
How this fits with other research
Laermans et al. (2025) found the same empathy link but added that social cognition sits in the middle of a brain-behavior network. The new study keeps the empathy piece and shows systemizing matters too.
Byrne et al. (2025) looked at autism, Down, and Williams groups. They saw no empathy-social tie in Williams syndrome, so the empathy rule may not hold across every diagnosis.
Caplan et al. (2019) showed warm parenting predicts social growth in young autistic kids. The 2025 data shift the focus from parent style to the teen’s own empathy and systemizing skills.
Why it matters
If empathy and systemizing fuel social success, teach both. Run perspective-taking games and rule-based Lego clubs in the same week. Track empathy and systemizing scores alongside social-skill probes to see if your teen clients rise together on both lines.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study aims to evaluate the relationship between social skills and sensory features, emotion regulation, and empathy in adolescents on the autism spectrum. One hundred and twenty-three adolescents were included in the study (50 autistic, 73 typically developing-TD adolescents). The participants filled out the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile (AASP) and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Parents of the participants completed the Child Empathy and Systemizing Quotient (EQ-C/SQ-C) and Autism-Social Skills Profile (ASSP) scales. Social reciprocity, social participation/avoidance, ASSP total scores, empathy and systemizing scores were lower, and detrimental social behaviors, low registration sensory profile scores were higher in the autism spectrum group. While a difference between genders was observed in sensory sensitivity, sensation avoiding, low registration quadrants and empathy scores, no gender and group interaction was found in any domain. Social skill total scores were correlated to sensation seeking and low registration sensory features, empathy, systemizing, and reappraisal emotion regulation scores. A hierarchical multiple linear regression analysis was conducted controlling for group and gender, sensation seeking (p = .032, β = 0.138), low registration (p = .012, β = - 0.215) of the AASP, and empathy (p < .001, β = 0.555) and systemizing (p = .033, β = 0.138) scores of the EQ/SQ-C was found to significantly predict social skill total scores. Although emotional regulation strategies may play a role, sensory processing features and empathy and systemizing skills seem to be the more significant contributors to social skills during adolescence. Interventions targeting sensory processing and especially improving empathy and systematization skills may positively affect social skills in adolescents on the autism spectrum.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2025 · doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1906-20.2020