Abstract:

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is a pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder. ASD individuals usually show persistent social communication barriers, social interaction barriers, and repetitive stereotyped behavior patterns in many situations. Furthermore, the empathy deficits in ASD individuals may be the main reason for their social interaction barriers. The mind-blindness hypothesis and the empathizing-systemizing theory explain their empathy deficits from two perspectives respectively, as well as put forward two different empathy intervention programs.
The mind-blindness hypothesis claimed that the empathy deficits in ASD individuals were mainly caused by the lack of theory of mind, indicating that they couldn’t understand others’ emotions and thoughts, which derived the empathy method of “making up for weaknesses” according to this characteristic. This category of intervention program advocated that the empathy deficits in ASD individuals should be directly intervened through corresponding empathic intervention programs to improve their empathic ability. The empathy method of “making up for weaknesses” mainly included the theory of mind (TOM) intervention, the perspective-taking intervention, the intervention of facial expression cognition, and so on. The empathy method of "making up for weaknesses" could improve the empathy ability of ASD individuals to some extent, but this category of intervention program required higher ability of ASD individuals. Additionally, it only could improve their skills related to the intervention contents instead of improving other aspects of their obstacles.
The empathizing-systemizing theory emphasized that although the lack of empathy ability of ASD individuals resulted in their social interaction deficits, their systematic capability was excellent, and even surpassed the general individuals, which derived the empathy method of “giving full play to strengths”. Based on the systematic strengths and interests of ASD individuals, the empathy method of "giving full play to strengths" proposed to increase their sense of self-efficacy and empathy by strengthening and encouraging them to do what they were good at, and thus improved their empathy ability. The method of “giving full play to strengths” mainly included the LEGO therapy, the serious games intervention, and the island-based intervention based on systemizing theory, and so on. The empathy method of “giving full play to strengths” emphasized that the advantages of systematic ability of ASD individuals should be used to make up for the weaknesses of their empathy deficits, so that ASD individuals could systematically accept empathy tasks and thus improve their empathy ability. However, the generalization and migration of such intervention programs have been questioned. In summary, the empathy method of "giving full play to strengths" provided a new idea for the intervention of empathy ability of ASD individuals.
The above two kinds of intervention programs had their own advantages and disadvantages. It is suggested that future interventions should not only take into full consideration to the diversity of each ASD individual, such as age, sex, severity of symptom and so on, but also pay more attention to the superior abilities of ASD individuals, carry out the multi-channel and multi-modality comprehensive interventions, as well as combine the island-based intervention based on systemizing theory with the “making up for weaknesses” and “giving full play to strengths” programs to formulate an individualized intervention plan for each ASD individual.

Key words: autism spectrum disorders, empathy, intervention