Enhancing Empathy and Theory of Mindстатья из журнала
Аннотация: Abstract Social cognitive skills such as empathy and theory of mind are crucial for everyday interactions, cooperation, and cultural learning, and deficits in these skills have been implicated in pathologies such as autism spectrum disorder, sociopathy, and nonverbal learning disorders. Little research has examined how these skills develop after early childhood and how they may be trained. We tested the hypothesis that experience in acting, an activity in which one must step into the shoes of others, leads to growth in both empathy and theory of mind. In two studies, we followed children (elementary school aged) and adolescents (high school freshmen) receiving 1 year of either acting or other arts training (visual arts, music) and assessed empathy and theory of mind before and after training. In both studies, those receiving acting (but not other arts) training showed significant gains in empathy scores; in Study 2, adolescents receiving acting training also showed significant gains on a naturalistic measure of theory of mind, the Empathic Accuracy Paradigm. These findings demonstrate plasticity in empathy and theory of mind long past the watershed age of 3 to 4 years and suggest that both capacities are enhanced by role-playing. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research formed part of the first author's doctoral dissertation conducted under the supervision of the second author. This research was supported by a fellowship from the American Psychological Foundation awarded to the first author and NSF Grant SBE 0841047 awarded to the second author. We are indebted to the schools, parents, and students who participated, particularly John Bay, Naomi Bailis, John Goodnough, Joanne Leunig, Linda Nathan, Juanita Rodrigues, and Roger Shoemaker. We thank Nick Ackerman, Tess Fielden, Amanda Goldfine, Hannah Hughes, Grace Jacobson, Kaitilin Mahoney, Emma Racioppo, Nicole Sullivan, and Deanna Swain for their help with data collection and coding. We thank Paul Bloom, Andrew Sofer, Liane Young, Glenn Schellenberg, Maya Tamir, Ehri Ryu, Jim Russell, Hiram Brownell, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on these findings. Additional informationNotes on contributorsThalia R. GoldsteinThalia R. Goldstein is now at Yale University.
Год издания: 2012
Авторы: Thalia R. Goldstein, Ellen Winner
Издательство: Taylor & Francis
Источник: Journal of Cognition and Development
Ключевые слова: Child and Animal Learning Development, Action Observation and Synchronization, Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
Открытый доступ: closed
Том: 13
Выпуск: 1
Страницы: 19–37