Measuring social cognition in adolescents: implications for students with TBI returning to school

In everyday adolescent communication, the ability to empathise with the mental state of others, recognise or infer intentions, or make judgements about emotional state, is a non-conscious but vital prerequisite of relating. Execution of these skills in social interactions supports both the exchange of social knowledge and also the development and maintenance of personal relationships. Thus, adolescents with impairments in these skills are at risk for a variety of negative outcomes. In this paper, we present data to illustrate that adolescents with traumatic brain injury (TBI) are likely to have impairments in processes such as emotion recognition and mental state attribution, and that these might not be identified on standardised tests. This is considered from the perspective of clinical assessment and intervention in school contexts.