Observable Empathy Differences in Toddlers Help Diagnose Autism Spectrum Disorders: Towards the development of an empathy scale for earlier diagnoses

Abstract

The average age of autism diagnoses is roughly between ages 3 and 4; however, toddlers will benefit from early diagnosis in that they can be referred into the appropriate service systems and hence receive therapies and treatments earlier. This will ensure for higher rates of improvement. The following study attempts to create a diagnostic tool through the use of an empathy measure that will help clinicians reliably diagnose toddlers before 3 years of age. The goals of the following study are twofold: 1) to develop an empathy measure that can reliably diagnose autism spectrum disorders when toddlers are 2 years old and 2) to determine the magnitude of empathy differences between toddlers with ASDs and typically developing toddlers. Results demonstrate that all but one subscale (Self-Distress) at 2 years old predicted diagnoses at 3 years old. Moreover, some mixed results are present when determining the significance of the difference in empathy scores between diagnostic groups.