Can they Care to Care? A Study on Developing Empathy Among Children with Autism using Behavioral Modification Techniques

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a need to incorporate the teaching of empathy as a psycho-social skill in the intervention programs for children with autism in the Philippines. More specifically, this study aimed to determine whether children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are capable of showing empathy as a result of therapy using behavioral modification techniques. Il also aimed to assess the socio- emotional skills and empathy levels of children with autism (CWA) and to determine whether sex differences had an impact on a child’s level of empathy. Lastly, it also intended to obtain the opinion of parents about the need to incorporate empathy into their child’s intervention programs. The objectives of this study require some emphasis on quantitative research designs, thus a questionnaire-scale was designed and administered to parent-respondents to obtain their socio-demographic profiles, their child’s medical history, current socio-emotional functioning, and empathy level. The research instrument made use of a behavioral checklist, similar to a Likert scale. The last part of the questionnaire aimed to obtain parents’ opinion towards the incorporation of empathy into their child’s therapy. The study population included 120 parent-respondents whose children were diagnosed with any of the three autism spectrum disorders - Autistic disorder, Asperger’s syndrome, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, ages six to eighteen years old. Parents were chosen through a purposive sampling design because of the inherent limitation of finding samples to represent the population of parents of CWA. As supplementary to the quantitative portion of the study, a subject was chosen to undergo therapy that was constructed and implemented by the researcher. The therapy sessions aimed to develop the child’s empathy using BMT and were conducted in one-hour to one-and-a-half-hour sessions, which consisted of eight meetings. Results show that majority of the children have high levels of socio-emotional functioning as reported by their parents, identifying peer interaction as an area of concern. Results also show that majority of the study population has an average level of empathy. The surprisingly high levels of socio-emotional functioning and empathy of CWA are largely attributable to their previous or current enrollment in different intervention programs. However, there is no clear- correlation between the level of socio-emotional functioning and empathy, as observed in the obtained Spearman rho’s correlation coefficient of 0.353, indicating only a moderate correlation between the two variables. This value also signifies a positive correlation indicating that as one variable increases, the other also increases. Although girls have higher levels of empathy compared to boys, statistical analysis shows that the scores of males and females were not significantly different from each other. The experimental part of the study utilized behavioral modification techniques. Results showed that the child-subject with ASD was indeed capable of developing empathy, given the proper intervention programs targeting this specific socio-emotional skill. The results also indicate that BMT could be an effective method in doing so. The child who was given therapy had a low level of empathy prior to therapy as indicated by assessment results, but his empathy level significantly improved after therapy. Therefore, both quantitative and qualitative data agree with the research hypothesis - There is indeed a need to incorporate empathy into the intervention programs of children with autism here in the Philippines. Adding to this the parents’ favorable take on the matter, the necessity of teaching empathy to CWA is reinforced.