Empathie et Trouble Oppositionnel chez l'enfant de 8 à 12 ans

A literature review underlines strong links between facial expression recognition difficulty, lack of empathy and behaviour disorder. The main goal of this study was to assess if, as it is suggested in the literature, oppositional children presented an empathy deficit that can make them more aggressive. Forty children between 8 and 10 years old (15 control children and 15 oppositional children) were subjected to the “Empathy Response Task” from Ricard et Kamberk-Kilicci (1995). As expected, results show that oppositional children are significantly less empathic that control children. Anger is often assigned to protagonists even when it isn’t present. This can be interpreted by the “hostile attribution distortion” according to wich the children with behaviour disorders tend to allocate hostile intentions to others (Milich & Dodge, 1984). Working on empathy must be integrated in behaviour disorder children therapy.