- Title
- Empathising and systemising in high anxiety states: an investigation of anxiety as a mechanism for divergence in cognitive performance
- Creator
- Strutt, Paul
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2018
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Systemising involves the observation of environmental contingencies and the subsequent formulation of concrete rules to predict events. Empathising underpins social cognitive processes, and consists of two primary components, which are (I) the drive to attribute affective states to others, and (II) the ability to produce appropriate behavioural responses based on these inferences. Hyper-systemisation represents an unusual imbalance in the cognitive profile, where systemising abilities are significantly greater than empathising abilities. This pattern of extreme divergence in cognitive abilities is observed in those with an Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) (Baron-Cohen, 2009). As well, anxiety disorders are frequently co-morbidly diagnosed with both primary ASC diagnoses (van Steensel, Bögels, & Perrin, 2011) and when ASC is diagnosed as secondary to a pre-existing developmental disorder, for example, in 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (Fine et al., 2005), and the prevalence of anxiety disorders is higher for the population on the autism spectrum than for those in the general population (Kim, Szatmari, Bryson, Streiner, & Wilson, 2000; van Steensel et al., 2011). For those on the autism spectrum, reduced empathic functioning means that these individuals often find it difficult to find their place in a highly socially oriented society. A common assumption is that the increased prevalence of anxiety disorders observed in this population occurs as a consequence of difficulties integrating into the social environment. However, this assumption has not been evaluated experimentally, and leaves open the possibility of an inverse relationship, where increased anxiety levels make a twofold contribution, serving to both reduce the degree to which an individual can actively engage in appropriate empathising, and also, in facilitating the development of an alternative, non-social, skillset – that which is informed by the drive to systemise. Manipulations of anxiety have demonstrated that when in highly anxious states, individuals show reduced empathic capacity towards others, suggesting a causal influence of anxiety on empathising abilities (Negd, Mallan, & Lipp, 2011). As well, given that the fundamental function of anxiety is to facilitate preparatory responses during potentially dangerous encounters, it is likely that adopting strategies that improve the reliability with which one can predict events in the environment, for example, by systemising aspects of the environment, would be favoured, especially in high states of anxiety. For the general population, systemising is adaptive in that it explains the general preference for daily routines, which maximise one’s sense of control during everyday activities. Whilst in extreme forms, it explains the compulsive hand washing demonstrated by some individuals with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and the rigid behavioural routines of individuals with ASC (Baron-Cohen, 2009). Collectively, this account suggests that high anxiety levels would reduce empathising abilities, and increase systemising abilities. The focus of the studies conducted within this thesis was to explore these possible causal effects experimentally within the general population, and to establish whether anxiety is a mechanism that drives divergence in empathising and systemising abilities. In the first study of this thesis (see chapter 2), the hypothesised link between high anxiety levels and hyper-systemisation was demonstrated. Those high in anxiety reported low empathising and high systemising scores, and relative to their less anxious peers, also demonstrated the greatest divergence between these cognitive tendencies. Based on this initial evidence, a series of studies were developed in order to test one possible pattern of causation – the hypothesis that an increase from baseline anxiety levels would reduce the ability to empathise whilst facilitating improvements on tests of systemising performance. The first in this series of studies (see chapter 3) focused on better understanding the low-empathising component of hyper-systemisation. The study utilised a social exclusion paradigm called Cyberball (Williams & Jarvis, 2006), which has been shown to affect state anxiety levels. Empathic performance was assessed using a modified emotion recognition task called the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001), both at baseline and after participation in anxiety manipulation. Results from this study suggested that participants who experienced social exclusion during the task maintained levels of state anxiety consistent with their reports at baseline, and also maintained comparable performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test throughout the study. In contrast, those who experienced group inclusion during Cyberball reported reduced state anxiety levels after their Cyberball experience, but surprisingly, demonstrated lower expression recognition accuracy on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, relative to their baseline performance. This pattern of results was in direct contrast to the initial hypothesis, and as such consideration was given to the nature of Cyberball as an anxiety manipulation and its potential impact on attention allocation when processing cues to social performance, specifically, facial expressions of emotion. In a follow-up eye-tracking study (see chapter 4), the effects of social exclusion on attentional biases to emotionally expressive faces were evaluated. Here, participants completed an expression-based dot-probe task, both as a baseline measure, and after participating in Cyberball. The dependent variables of interest were the time to categorise targets presented in the same spatial location as expressive (happy, angry, disgusted) faces, as well as eye movements to towards these expression types. Both the reaction time and eye movement data, captured as proportion of fixations and proportion of time spent viewing expressive versus neutral faces, indicated that participants who experienced social exclusion during Cyberball biased their attention toward expressive faces (particularly angry faces) over neutral faces, whilst those who experienced inclusion during Cyberball attended more to the neutral expressions after their Cyberball experience. Whilst participants also reported changes to their state anxiety levels as a function of their participation, it was concluded that it may have been the cues to social evaluation experienced during Cyberball that facilitated hypervigilance to such information, and as such, may have contributed to superior performance when identifying facial expressions of emotion demonstrated by those who were social excluded in the previous chapter. In the final experimental chapter of this thesis (see chapter 5), the objectives were twofold. First, we sought to develop an anxiety manipulation procedure that was free of the extraneous variability introduced when using the Cyberball manipulation. Second, we sought to demonstrate the hypothesised divergent effects of increased state anxiety on both empathising performance and on systemising performance within a single paradigm. The results of this study partially supported the anxiety-divergence hypothesis. Participants whose state anxiety levels were increased using a threat-of-shock paradigm demonstrated reduced empathic responding towards individuals depicted in distressing situations, and improved efficiency on a local/global processing task (Navon, 1977), a visuospatial task that has previously been correlated with systemising scores (Billington, Baron-Cohen, & Bor, 2008). This thesis demonstrates that empathising and systemising performance can be differentially affected by state-based changes in anxiety levels, and that anxiety may be a key factor in exaggerating the divergence between empathising and systemising abilities. A fundamental contribution of this thesis will be to provide an informative platform from which similar investigations can be undertaken with participants who have developmental disorders e.g. autism spectrum conditions, which are characterised by both extreme imbalances in their empathic and systematic cognitive abilities, and are also known to be complicated by co-morbid diagnoses of anxiety disorders. When formulating clinical diagnoses, clinicians should seek to account for the contribution of anxiety to behaviour, particularly when relying heavily on observations of externalised “autistic” behaviours that may be exaggerated by the presence of anxiety.
- Subject
- anxiety; autism; empathy; systemising; social cognition; thesis by publication
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1383736
- Identifier
- uon:31980
- Rights
- Copyright 2018 Paul Strutt
- Language
- eng
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