Performance of healthy subjects on an ecologically valid test for social cognition: The short, Dutch Version of The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT)

• Published in: Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology Vol. 36; no. 10; pp. 1031 - 1041
• Main Authors: Westerhof-Evers, Herma J., Visser-Keizer, Annemarie C., McDonald, Skye, Spikman, Jacoba M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hove Routledge 26.11.2014; Psychology Press
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Assessment; Awareness; Biological and medical sciences; Brain Injuries - complications; Brain injury; Cognition Disorders - diagnosis; Cognition Disorders - etiology; Emotion recognition; Emotions - physiology; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Healthy Volunteers; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Netherlands; Neuropsychological Tests; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychometrics; Psychometrics. Sociometry; Reproducibility of Results; Social Behavior; Social cognition; Social Environment; Social inferences; Social Perception; Social psychology; Statistics, Nonparametric; Young Adult; Netherlands; Abbreviated form; Human; Affect affectivity; Emotion recognition; Nervous system diseases; Foreign language version; Healthy subject; Assessment; Inference; Emotion emotionality; Social cognition; Cerebral disorder; Social interaction; Central nervous system disease; Performance; Social inferences; Ecological approach; Dutch; Recognition; Brain injury
• ISSN: 1380-3395; 1744-411X; 1744-411X
• DOI: 10.1080/13803395.2014.966661

The present paper addresses the psychometric quality of the shortened Dutch version of The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT), a social cognition task comprising dynamic social interactions. Because the original TASIT required a rather long administration time, two shortened parallel forms were developed. Results showed that TASIT-short was feasible and that the two alternate forms were reasonably comparable in a group of neurologically healthy individuals (N = 98). Also, the results confirmed the ecological validity of TASIT-short in this healthy group. The test appeared sensitive to brain injury as it differentiated between the healthy subjects and a group of patients with acquired brain injury (N = 16). On the basis of the present study we conclude that TASIT-short has added value to the assessment of social cognition in patients with acquired brain injury.