Empathic Functioning in Brain Injury: Development of a new test

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Empathic Functioning in Brain Injury: Development and validation of a new test instrument

• IRAS ID

  152216

• Contact name

  Joanne Howe

• Sponsor organisation

  University of the West of England

• Duration of Study in the UK

  2 years, 6 months, 1 days

• Research summary

  Recent research has identified that people who have Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) often have difficulty understanding and sharing the feelings of others, in otherwords they have reduced empathy (de Sousa et al., 2012; Wood and Williams, 2008; Williams and Wood, 2009). Empathy is important for successful relationships with others. It gives us the ability to understand and respond to the emotional needs and experiences of others (Decety and Jackson, 2004). Reduced empathy causes problems anticipating other people’s feelings and reactions, and makes us less aware of how we come across to others (Baron-Cohen, 2011). Deficits in empathy are thought to be a factor that may underpin many of the neuro-behavioural disorders associated with brain injury (Wood and Williams, 2008). Personality and behavioural changes are common after ABI and are often reported by family members as causing the most amount of stress and difficulties (Brooks and McKinlay, 1983). They result in poor psychosocial outcome (Kreutzer at al., 1996) and loneliness (Oddy et al., 1985).

  A need for a test to measure deficits in the different components of empathy in patients who have ABI has been identified (Wood and Williams, 2008).

  This research aims to develop a reliable, valid and ecologically sound test that can be used by clinicians to assess empathic functioning and identify deficits, so that appropriate interventions can be implemented which will improve outcome.

  Normative data will be collected on a stratified sample from 100 neurologically healthy (Non-ABI) participants recruited from community volunteers, students studying psychology and also staff working at the University of the West of England. Validity data will be collected from 30 ABI participants recruited from brain injury settings. The new test plus additional validity tests will be completed and compared.

• REC name

  South West - Frenchay Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  15/SW/0229

• Date of REC Opinion

  15 Oct 2015

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion