Reduced cognitive empathy and differences in EEG activity in low-achieving adolescents

Students with low academic achievement tend to display more maladaptive behaviours in interactions with peers and teachers. Empathy plays a key mediating role in these interactions and is also linked to academic performance. In particular, facial emotion recognition is one component of socioemotional processing that may contribute to empathic responding. To explore the relationship between empathy, emotion recognition, and academic achievement, a comparative study was conducted with 40 students aged 14-17, divided into two groups: one with low academic achievement enrolled in a school support programme, and a control group with adequate academic performance. A multimethod approach was applied, including the Basic Empathy Scale, a facial expression recognition test, and electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings. Results showed significantly lower cognitive empathy in the low-achieving group in the primary between-group analysis. The overall between-group difference in facial emotion recognition accuracy was not statistically significant. EEG analyses identified exploratory between-group differences in source-level oscillatory activity estimates during facial-expression processing. These electrophysiological findings provide complementary information about task-related activity patterns but should not be interpreted as specific neural markers of empathy or as confirmation of a behavioural facial emotion recognition deficit. Overall, the multimethod approach offers complementary perspectives on socioemotional functioning in low-achieving adolescents, although the exploratory EEG findings require cautious interpretation and replication in larger, independent samples.