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The awareness of social inference test: development of a shortened version for use in adults with acquired brain injury |
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| Authors: | Cynthia A. Honan Skye McDonald Christopher Sufani Donald. W. Hine Fiona Kumfor |
| Affiliation: | 1. Division of Psychology, School of Medicine, University of Tasmania, Launceston, Australia;2. NHMRC Moving Ahead Centre for Research Excellence in Brain Recovery, Sydney, Australia;3. School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia;4. School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences, University of New England, Armidale, Australia;5. Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia;6. School of Medical Sciences, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia;7. ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Sydney, Australia |
| Abstract: | Objective: The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT) is an ecologically valid test of complex social perception. Despite its utility for detecting social perception deficits in clinical groups, its lengthy administration time has limited its routine use in clinical practice. This paper describes the development and validation of a shortened version of the TASIT (TASIT-S) in 160 individuals (males = 129) with moderate to severe acquired brain injury (ABI). Method: Both Rasch and confirmatory factor analysis modeling were used to create the TASIT-S, which, consistent with the original test, included the following subtests: (1) Emotion Evaluation Test (10 items), assessing basic emotion recognition; (2) Social Inference (Minimal) Test (9 items), assessing understanding of sincere and sarcastic exchanges; and (3) Social Inference (Enriched) Test (9 items), assessing comprehension of lies and sarcasm. Results: The TASIT-S demonstrated excellent construct validity as evidenced by its high correlations with the original TASIT and correlations with social cognition and cognitive neuropsychological measures. Importantly, the TASIT-S also successfully differentiated between ABI participants and healthy controls (n = 43). Conclusions: The new shortened version of the TASIT is a promising new tool with excellent psychometric properties that can assist clinicians with the detection of complex social perception deficits in ABI. |
| Keywords: | Social cognition acquired brain injury test development theory of mind emotion perception |