Assessing social cognition: A validation study of the The Awareness of Social Inference Test – Short Version (TASIT-S)

Background and aims: The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT) is an ecologically valid and reliable tool that assesses higher-level social perception deficits. While Part 1 assesses emotion recognition, Parts 2 and 3 assess the ability to detect literal (sincerity and lies) and non-literal (sarcasm) conversational remarks, as well as the ability to make judgments about the thoughts, intentions and feelings of speakers. The measure is sensitive to the detection of deficits in various patient groups including traumatic brain injury, schizophrenia, frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and stroke. Despite its clinical relevance as a tool to assess higher-order social cognition impairments in these populations, its administration time is lengthy (60-75 mins). As such, routine use of this tool in clinical settings is often difficult to achieve. The aim of this study is to develop a shortened version of the TASIT.

Method: Participants included 160 individuals (129 males) with moderate-to-severe acquired brain injury. Data were applied to the Rasch model using WINSTEPS and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) using AMOS.

Results: The resulting shortened TASIT measure with an estimated administration time of 20 to 30 minutes, demonstrated acceptable goodness-of-fit and explained an acceptable amount of total variance in each subtest. Construct validity of the new measure was confirmed by high correlations with the original version of the TASIT, moderate correlations with alternative social cognition measures, and small-to-moderate correlations with most alternative cognitive tests.

Conclusions: The shortened TASIT is a promising screening tool for higher-order social cognition deficits in those with acquired brain injury which can easily be administered in clinical settings.