Social cognition assessment in relation to cognitive dysfunctions and brain lesions among stroke survivors

• Main Author: Majied, Hayfaa
• Published: University of Birmingham 2017
• Subjects: 616.8; BF Psychology
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.707650

Families of brain injured patients often report change in the patient’s everyday social behaviour. However, efficient instruments for the assessment of social cognitive (SC) abilities of these individuals have been lacking. To fill this gap, a novel instrument was designed and administered to healthy controls and stroke survivors in order to ascertain its psychometric properties. Further theoretical insights into SC have been carried out in three levels. First, it aimed to identify commonalities among the SC elements. The analysis revealed four factors that explained 71% of the total variance: Social Cognition Control; Motivation; Interest in Others; and Mindreading. At the second level, the thesis addressed the associations and dissociations between SC elements and ‘general cognitive domains’. This analysis revealed that SC elements are mostly processed independently. However, level of education and spatial attention predicted the patients’ ability to identify others’ emotions, and disinhibition predicted impaired belief attribution and misunderstanding figurative language. Third, ‘Hodological analysis’ was conducted to explore association of SC syndromes with integrity of white matter pathways. This analysis revealed ten white matter pathways that cluster into distinct networks, and which uniquely were associated with three of the SC factors. Finally, a single case study of a stroke survivor demonstrated degrees of convergence/divergence vis-à-vis the track-wise lesion-deficit analysis from the group study, and the result were in favour of the use of multi-faceted SC test battery in stroke patients, and underscore the importance of single-case studies in this population as a complement to group-based analyses.