A Study on the Influence of Empathy on Helping Behavior of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder Under Different Affective Priming Conditions.

PURPOSE: This study explored empathy's effect on helping behavior of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) under different affective priming. Experiment 1 examined the predictive effect of autistic children's empathic ability on their helping behavior; Experiment 2 explored whether positive versus negative affective priming moderated this predictive effect for high-empathy autistic children. METHODS: Two experiments were carried out. Experiment 1 used the Chinese Measure of Empathy and Sympathy (MES) to group participants into high/low-empathy groups by top/bottom 30% scores, with the Block-Dropping Task measuring helping behavior. Experiment 2 recruited only children with the top 30% MES scores as high-empathy subjects, divided them equally into positive/negative priming subgroups; cartoon clips induced emotion, and the same task assessed helping behavior. RESULTS: Experiment 1 revealed that the high-empathy group demonstrated significantly higher helping behavior scores (M = 3.54, SD = 0.51) compared with the low-empathy group (M = 1.29, SD = 1.46). Empathic ability exerted a significant positive predictive effect on the helping behavior of children with ASD (Z = - 4.929, p < .001). Experiment 2 indicated that no significant disparity in helping behavior was observed between the two affective priming groups, and affective priming valence showed no significant influence on the helping behavior of high-empathy autistic children (Z = - 1.152, p = .250). CONCLUSION: These findings illuminate the roles of empathic ability and affective priming in the helping behavior of autistic children, offering novel insights into the mechanisms underlying their social-behavioral development and informing directions for educational intervention.