Overview
The BASS was designed to assess social skills in people with suspected or diagnosed dementia to enable individuals, their families, and clinicians to better understand how dementia has affected their cognition and behaviour.
This website has been developed as a training package for clinicians and researchers to facilitate and promote the use of the BASS. Our aim is to provide all instructions, materials, and research evidence to enable clinicians and researchers to confidently use this screening tool in their work. Within this website you can find administration and scoring guidelines, an administration training video, a scoring example, all necessary administration materials, and research publications associated with the BASS.
Background
Social skills are the abilities that enable us to communicate and build relationships with others. These include the ability to read facial expressions and understand tone of voice, to put yourself in another's shoes to know what they might be thinking, feeling and predict what they might do next, and to show empathy and concern for others.
Social skills are frequently impaired in people with dementia. There may be deficits in facial processing and emotion recognition, understanding others thoughts and intentions, empathy, and understanding the more subtle nuances in language such as sarcasm and lies, and social behavior.
Objective assessment of social skills is rarely undertaken in clinical settings, partly because there is a lack of appropriate screening tools for quick assessment. The BASS provides a brief and informative assessment of social cognition in people with dementia, filling a current gap.
The BASS was developed by Dr Michelle Kelly and Professor Skye McDonald. For further information about Dr Kelly, please visit her University of Newcastle profile and her research lab website. For more information about Professor McDonald, please visit her University of New South Wales profile and her research lab website.