TASIT super short: Empirical development of a social cognition screener

Social cognition is a core cognitive domain commonly impaired in many clinical conditions including dementia, brain injury and schizophrenia. Yet, clinicians rarely formally assess social cognition as tests are too long to be added to already lengthy assessments. Additionally, reliable tests suitable for clinical practice, as opposed to research settings, are lacking. The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT) is recognized by experts as one of the leading social cognition tests for transdiagnostic and cross-cultural assessment.

Here we aimed to make a super short version (TASIT SS) which would be suitable for brief screening in clinical populations.

Social cognition was assessed in 135 individuals diagnosed with dementia (DEM), 150 adults with acquired brain injury (ABI) and 67 healthy adults (HA) using Parts 1 and 2 of the original TASIT. Rasch analysis was used to identify a small subset of items and subsequent analyses examined construct validity.

The new TASIT SS includes five items assessing responses to 4 videos. Infit and outfit values ranged from 0.8-1.2. Correlations with TASIT ranged from .65-.69 and correlations with cognitive measures were small. Effect sizes between HA and clinical groups were large (DEM) to medium (ABI).

Using an empirical approach, we were able to devise TASIT SS, which is suitable for use in dementia and acquired brain injury populations. Administration time is <5 mins, while maintaining psychometric properties of TASIT making it an important new addition to the suite of tests developed for assessment of social cognition in clinical practice.