Theory Of Mind Task Battery Download

The Theory of Mind Task Battery was designed to assess the theory of mind understanding of younger and older children who vary widely in their cognitive and linguistic profiles. The test is appropriate for nonverbal individuals as respondents can indicate responses either verbally or through pointing. The Theory of Mind Task Battery has been evaluated for test-retest reliability (Hutchins, Prelock, & Chace, 2008.) and internal consistency and it correlates strongly with other measures of theory of mind lending credibility to validity of the measure. For more information about The Theory of Mind Task Battery, please see the following YouTube Tutorial:

Citation: Marinis T, Andreou M, Bagioka DV, Baumeister F, Bongartz C, Czypionka A, Golegos A, Peristeri E, Skrimpa V, Durrleman S and Terzi A (2023) Development and validation of a task battery for verbal and non-verbal first- and second-order theory of mind. Front. Lang. Sci. 1:1052095. doi: 10.3389/flang.2022.1052095

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The interest in social cognition in schizophrenia is justified by the relationship between deficits in these skills and negative functional outcomes. Although assessment batteries have already been described, there is no consensus about which measures are useful in predicting patient functioning or quality of life (QoL). We investigated a set of five measures of recognition of facial emotions, theory of mind (ToM), and empathy in a cohort of 143 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder at inclusion and, amongst whom 79 were reassessed 1 year later. The distribution was satisfactory for the TREF (Facial Emotion Recognition Task), V-SIR (Versailles-Situational Intention Reading), and QCAE (Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy). Internal consistency was satisfactory for the TREF, V-SIR, V-Comics (Versailles Intention Attribution Task), and QCAE. Sensitivity to change was acceptable for the TREF. The TREF and V-SIR showed a cross-sectional relationship with functioning beyond the clinical symptoms of schizophrenia but not beyond neurocognition. Moreover, the TREF and V-SIR at inclusion could not predict functioning one year later, whereas most neurocognitive and clinical dimensions at inclusion could. Finally, only affective QCAE showed a significant cross-sectional, but not longitudinal, association with QoL. In conclusion, the TREF had satisfactory psychometric properties and showed a cross-sectional, but not longitudinal, association with objective outcome measures, thus appearing to be reliable in clinical practice and research. The V-SIR also showed promising psychometric properties, despite a possible weakness to detect change. However, these measures should be interpreted within the context of the good predictive power of the neurocognitive and clinical status on the outcome.

The ongoing interest in the constructs of social cognition in schizophrenia is justified by the relationships between deficits in these skills and a negative functional outcome1. Several authors have postulated that social cognition is a distinct construct that acts as a mediator between cognitive functions and functioning, despite its close association with neurocognition2,3. In a meta-analysis, Fett et al.4 reported that social cognitive deficits in schizophrenia have a greater impact on social functioning than neurocognitive disorders (i.e., memory, attention, executive functioning, and speed of processing). Another meta-analysis showed that social cognition explains a larger portion of the variance in functioning than neurocognition5. Because of its importance as a determinant of functional and clinical outcomes, social cognition could therefore be considered as a cognitive domain per se, thus justifying its specific evaluation along with that of neurocognition6. Departing from a single domain conceptualization, Green et al.7 considered that five constructs characterize social cognition: perception of emotions, attributional style, theory of mind (ToM), social perception, and social knowledge. To date, the use of several tools organized within a battery of tests has been a logical response to the inherent heterogeneity of these constructs and has encouraged psychometric research to measure the advantages and weaknesses of candidate measures.

As mentioned above, social cognition is associated with neurocognition; these two types of performance both partially predicting functioning. Consequently, it is informative to characterize incremental validity as the predictive power of a measure beyond neurocognition. Although most social cognitive measures included in the SCOPE battery exhibit significant cross-sectional correlations with certain outcome measures, only a few (ER-40, Hinting task, and IBT) show additional predictive power beyond neurocognition11. Such added value was also found for the DACOBS and TASIT Lies8 but was not supported in another study14. However, these studies measured the strength of association between social cognition and functioning using either a cross-sectional design or during a short period (no longer than 4 weeks). Arguably, a much more extended period would be required to reveal the action of causal pathways and capture changes related to disease progression and therapeutic interventions.

The SCOPE study also found an association between ToM (measured by the Hinting Task and RMET) and functioning, but only the Hinting Task showed an association with functioning beyond neurocognition11. Davidson et al.8 included the V-Comics in their battery and, contrary to our study, did not report such an association with functioning. However, they did not split the task into two versions, and the association that we found was significant for only one.

On the other hand, the SPeX-GBA test, of which the psychometric properties are weaker than those of the other tasks, did not show any association with functioning. Therefore, it does not appear adequate to be included in a social cognition battery. Finally, as assessed by the QCAE, empathetic dispositions did not show a significant association with functioning, contrary to the results reported for the SCAF battery14. However, the measurement of empathy in that battery was made using a very different paradigm, closer to a ToM task.

Theory-of-mind was assessed with V-Comics (Versailles Intention Attribution Task)45 that is composed of short comic strips in which the person has to find the most logical ending by choosing among three propositions (one right answer, two wrong answers). This task is composed of three conditions: attribution of an intention to others and understanding physical causality, with or without characters. This task was divided into two versions of equal length (by matching the difficulty of the two versions based on previous results) to produce two alternative versions for test-retest intervention protocols and avoid a learning effect. Each of the two versions has 20 items for the physical logic control condition and 14 items for the intention attribution experimental condition. We used the average accuracy in the intention attribution experimental condition.

The SPEX-GBA theory-of-mind test consists of eight scenarios in the form of silent animations47. They are divided among five conditions to evaluate the ability of the test subject to attribute physical causes to an event and the goals and beliefs of a character. As for V-COMICS, this task was divided into two versions of equal length. Each version has 20 items (12 to assess the attribution of goals and beliefs to a character, 8 to assess the attribution of physical causality). In the analyses, only the 12 items assessing the attribution of goals and beliefs were considered. The sensitivity of goal and belief attribution was calculated from these 12 items as described in Supplementary Information 1.

Findings from cross-cultural theory-of-mind studies highlight potential measurement effects and both general (e.g., East-West) and specific (e.g., pedagogical experiences) cultural contrasts. We compared theory-of-mind scores for children from UK and Italy (two Western countries that differ in age of school entry) and Japan (a Far-Eastern country in which children, like their Italian counterparts, start school later than British children). Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to data from 268 age-gender- and verbal ability-matched 5- to 6-year olds. Key findings were that (i) all 8 indicators loaded onto a single latent factor; and (ii) this latent factor explained significant variance in each group, with just one indicator showing differential item functioning. Supporting the importance of pedagogical experiences, British children outperformed both their Italian and Japanese counterparts.

Thus, by administering a wide variety of theory-of-mind tasks to carefully matched groups of school-aged children, we aimed both to extend the conceptual and developmental scope of existing cross-cultural research and to improve the methodological rigour of this research. In particular, adopting a battery approach allowed us to apply statistical methods to test the extent to which cultural differences simply reflect contrasts in the measurement properties of tasks used in different languages with different cultural groups. Group differences can arise in cross-cultural research for a number of reasons that are unrelated to differences in underlying abilities; these include differing definitions and meanings of a concept, inappropriate translations, and differing response styles, reflecting differences in social norms [32, 33]. Nevertheless, group comparisons have traditionally used statistical procedures (e.g., -tests) that assume that test items function in a similar way for all participants regardless of group membership [32]. This assumption of measurement invariance (i.e., equivalent empirical relations in different groups between test items and the latent construct) means that group comparisons can yield spurious and misleading results. ff782bc1db