Empathy in Middle Childhood: Links with Maternal Depression and Role-Confusion, and Children’s Attachment Security and Emotional Regulation

This study shows that lower maternal role-confusion and children's greater attachment security and lower emotion regulation difficulties predict higher cognitive empathy in middle childhood (N=112; M age=11.69). Greater maternal role-confusion was associated with greater affective empathy. Results suggest the importance of investigating factors associated with cognitive and affective empathy.