2026-10-14T18:54:01Z https://www.scidb.cn/oai

10.57760/sciencedb.012sl 2026-09-23T19:48:53Z

2026-09-23 Dissociable Contributions of Inhibitory Control and Imitation Inhibition to Empathic Accuracy, Cognitive and Affective Em-pathy in Females with Low Trait Empathy doi:10.57760/sciencedb.012sl en Empathy involves both domain-general and domain-specific cognitive control processes, yet their distinct causal contributions to different empathy components remain unclear. The current study investigated the effects of inhibitory control and imitation inhibition manipulations on cognitive and affective empathy in individuals with low trait empathy. Sixty-seven female participants (aged 18-23) scoring below the population mean on the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy were randomly assigned to single-session manipulation, either imitation inhibition (via self-other control task, SOC) or inhibitory control (via stop-signal task, SST). Pre- and post-manipulation empathic performance was assessed using the Chinese version Empathic Accuracy Task (EAT) that yielded empathic accuracy scores alongside measures of cognitive empathy and affective empathy. Results revealed dissociable patterns: the SOC group showed significant improvements in empathic accuracy for positive videos, target-valence ratings (cognitive empathy), and emotion contagion (affective empathy), whereas the SST group showed significant improvements in empathic accuracy for negative videos, self-valence for positive videos, and emotion contagion. Neither manipulation significantly affected perspective taking. These findings provide preliminary causal evidence that domain-specific imitation inhibition and domain-general inhibitory control differentially enhance empathy components, potentially through distinct mechanisms of self-other distinction and self-regulation.  inhibitory control; imitation inhibition; cognitive empathy; affective empathy; empathic accuracy Yi Xie Shangqi Dong Yi Wang RESTRICTED dataset Science Data Bank