ArticleDevelopmental medicine and child neurology2022
Cognitive empathy across the lifespan.
Article in Developmental medicine and child neurology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Adrenarche, social cognition, and the development and evolution of autism spectrum traits.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- The relationship between psychopathy and autism: a systematic review and narrative synthesis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Emotional Valence Influences Empathic Capacity in Adolescence and Young Adulthood.Journal of adolescence · 2026Article
- Do Physicians CARE? Psychometric Validation of the Portuguese Self-Report Version of the CARE Measure.Evaluation & the health professions · 2026Article
- Longitudinal trajectories of empathy among chinese medical students: a five-year prospective study using a dual-scale assessment.BMC medical education · 2026Article
- Empathic Disequilibrium in Autistic Traits and CU Traits: Investigating Empathy Imbalance in Children.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2026Article
- Aggressiveness that makes one grow: a destructive or vital force in adolescence? Reflections and working hypotheses.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Article
- Is the Association Between Emotion Recognition and Social Functioning Mediated by Cognitive Empathy and Emotional Language? An Examination of School-Aged Autistic Children.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2025Article
- Impathy and Emotion Recognition: How Attachment Shapes Self- and Other-Focused Emotion Processing.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Are You a Closet Dualist? Evidence From Brief Implicit Association Task.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2025Article
- (State) empathy: how context matters.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Review
- Neural empathy mechanisms are shared for physical and social pain, and increase from adolescence to older adulthood.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- Sex differences in social cognition among individuals with schizophrenia and in healthy control participants: a secondary analysis of published data.Archives of women's mental health · 2024Article
- Parasympathetic regulation and support from family and friends predict prosocial development in U.S. Mexican-origin adolescents.Developmental psychology · 2024Article
- Risk-Taking Behavior Differs Between Older Adults with and without Mild Cognitive Impairment.Journal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD · 2024Article
- The illusion of the mind-body divide is attenuated in males.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- The Founder: Dispositional Greed, Showbiz, and the Commercial Determinants of Health.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Cognitive empathy across the lifespan.Developmental medicine and child neurology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
aimTo describe the development of cognitive empathy across the lifespan from a very large cohort using a standardized measure of cognitive empathy ability.
methodParticipants (n=4545, age bands <5y to >75y, 60% female) were a convenience sample recruited voluntarily from visitors to the Glasgow Science Centre in the UK, who completed the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test.
resultsWhen compared to preceding age groups, we found significant developmental gains in empathy ability in children aged 6 to 7 years (p=0.048, d=0.45) and again at 10 to 12 years (p=0.042, d=0.23), followed by a slight reduction in ability during adolescence (p=0.087, d=-0.18), and functional maturity in those aged 19 to 25 years (p=0.001, d=0.76). Cognitive empathy abilities remained relatively stable across adulthood but gradually declined in people over 65 years, with notable decline in males over 75 years (p=0.001, d=-0.98). Females performed better than males at all ages.
interpretationUnderstanding developmental issues in cognitive empathy could influence approaches to moral and social education for children, and health and social care support for older people. Standardized cognitive empathy tests could also provide novel approaches in the early detection of developmental vulnerabilities in a range of neurological conditions, and within neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders in which cognitive empathy is known to be impaired. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: Cognitive empathy is a late-developing ability and changes across the lifespan. Cognitive empathy increases during childhood but with potentially altered abilities during adolescence. Cognitive empathy matures during early adulthood and gradually declines in older age. There is a female advantage in cognitive empathy abilities.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.