Sensory reactivity, empathizing and systemizing in autism spectrum conditions and sensory processing disorder

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.05.005Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • A diagnostic confusion exists between ASD and SPD, both being associated with atypical sensory reactivity.

  • Our aim was to test whether children with ASC and SPD can be differentiated on sensory symptoms and/or cognitive styles in empathy and systemizing.

  • Across groups sensory symptoms and empathy showed a negative correlation with each other.

  • Both groups, children with ASC and SPD, showed significantly more sensory symptoms than typically developing children.

  • The ASC group showed lower empathy and higher systemizing compared to the SPD group; cognitive styles seem useful for differentiating ASC and SPD.

Abstract

Although the DSM-5 added sensory symptoms as a criterion for ASC, there is a group of children who display sensory symptoms but do not have ASC; children with sensory processing disorder (SPD). To be able to differentiate these two disorders, our aim was to evaluate whether children with ASC show more sensory symptomatology and/or different cognitive styles in empathy and systemizing compared to children with SPD and typically developing (TD) children. The study included 210 participants: 68 children with ASC, 79 with SPD and 63 TD children. The Sensory Processing Scale Inventory was used to measure sensory symptoms, the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) to measure autistic traits, and the Empathy Quotient (EQ) and Systemizing Quotient (SQ) to measure cognitive styles. Across groups, a greater sensory symptomatology was associated with lower empathy. Further, both the ASC and SPD groups showed more sensory symptoms than TD children. Children with ASC and SPD only differed on sensory under-reactivity. The ASD group did, however, show lower empathy and higher systemizing scores than the SPD group. Together, this suggest that sensory symptoms alone may not be adequate to differentiate children with ASC and SPD but that cognitive style measures could be used for differential diagnosis.

Abbreviations

ASC
autism spectrum conditions
AQ
autism spectrum quotient
EQ
empathy quotient
TD
typically developing
SPD
sensory processing disorder
SQ
systemizing quotient

Keywords

Autism spectrum conditions
Sensory processing disorder
Sensory symptoms
Empathy
Systemizing

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