TY  - JOUR
A1  - Breil, Christina
A1  - Kanske, Philipp
A1  - Pittig, Roxana
A1  - Böckler, Anne
T1  - A revised instrument for the assessment of empathy and Theory of Mind in adolescents: Introducing the EmpaToM-Y
JF  - Behavior Research Methods
N2  - Empathy and Theory of Mind (ToM) are two core components of social understanding. The EmpaToM is a validated social video task that allows for independent manipulation and assessment of the two capacities. First applications revealed that empathy and ToM are dissociable constructs on a neuronal as well as on a behavioral level. As the EmpaToM has been designed for the assessment of social understanding in adults, it has a high degree of complexity and comprises topics that are inadequate for minors. For this reason, we designed a new version of the EmpaToM that is especially suited to measure empathy and ToM in youths. In experiment 1, we successfully validated the EmpaToM-Y on the original EmpaToM in an adult sample (N = 61), revealing a similar pattern of results across tasks and strong correlations of all constructs. As intended, the performance measure for ToM and the control condition of the EmpaToM-Y showed reduced difficulty. In experiment 2, we tested the feasibility of the EmpaToM-Y in a group of teenagers (N = 36). Results indicate a reliable empathy induction and higher demands of ToM questions for adolescents. We provide a promising task for future research targeting inter-individual variability of socio-cognitive and socio-affective capacities as well as their precursors and outcomes in healthy minors and clinical populations.
KW  - empathy
KW  - Theory of Mind
KW  - social cognition
KW  - social understanding
KW  - mentalizing
KW  - asolescence
KW  - development
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-302877
VL  - 53
ER  -