| Autor: |
Dodich A; Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Via Olgettina 58, 20134, Milan, Italy. dodich.alessandra@hsr.it.; Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy. dodich.alessandra@hsr.it., Cerami C; Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Via Olgettina 58, 20134, Milan, Italy.; Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.; Department of Clinical Neurosciences, San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, Italy., Canessa N; Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.; NeTS Center-Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS), Pavia, Italy., Crespi C; Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Via Olgettina 58, 20134, Milan, Italy.; Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy., Iannaccone S; Department of Clinical Neurosciences, San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, Italy., Marcone A; Department of Clinical Neurosciences, San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, Italy., Realmuto S; Experimental Biomedicine and Clinical Neuroscience Department (BioNeC), University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy., Lettieri G; Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Via Olgettina 58, 20134, Milan, Italy., Perani D; Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Via Olgettina 58, 20134, Milan, Italy.; Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.; Nuclear Medicine Unit, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy., Cappa SF; Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.; NeTS Center-Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS), Pavia, Italy. |
| Abstrakt: |
Theory of Mind (ToM), the process by which an individual imputes mental states to himself and others, is presently considered as a multidimensional cognitive domain, with two main facets (i.e., cognitive and affective ToM) accounting, respectively, for the ability to understand others' intention (intention attribution-IA) and emotions (emotion attribution-EA). Despite the large amount of literature investigating the behavioural and neural bases of mentalizing abilities in neurological conditions, there is still a lack of validated neuropsychological tools specifically designed to assess such skills. Here, we report the normative data of the Story-Based Empathy Task (SET), a non-verbal test developed for the assessment of intention and emotion attribution in the neurodegenerative conditions characterized by the impairment of social-emotional abilities. It is an easy-to-administer task including 18 stimuli, sub-grouped into two experimental conditions assessing, respectively, the ability to infer others' intentions (SET-IA) and emotions (SET-EA), compared to a control condition of causal inference (SET-CI). Normative data were collected in 136 Italian subjects pooled across subgroups homogenous for age (range 20-79 years), sex, and education (at least 5 years). The results show a detrimental effect of age and a beneficial effect of education on both the global score and each subscale, for which we provide correction grids. This new task could be a useful tool to investigate both affective and cognitive aspects of ToM in the course of disorders of socio-emotional behaviour, such as the fronto-temporal dementia spectrum. |
