A COMPARISON OF AFFECTIVE THEORY OF MIND ABILITIES BETWEEN PARTICIPANTS WITH AMNESTIC MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT AND HEALTHY CONTROLS

Abstract

Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to make inferences on other's mental states such as beliefs, intentions, or emotions. There are two main components of ToM: affective and cognitive. Affective ToM has been shown to be impaired in people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, how ToM dysfunction is related to cognitive impairment is still under debate. This study aims to investigate ToM abilities and determine the relationship between cognitive functions and ToM among participants with amnestic MCI. In the present study, we are reporting preliminary results from a larger work-in-progress. We assessed affective ToM abilities and cognitive functioning in a sample of 29 MCI patients and 21 healthy aged controls. In order to evaluate ToM, participants were administered two different affective ToM tests: Reading mind in the eyes test was used to measure the ability to infer others’ complex emotions and mental states. Faux pas recognition test, on the other hand, was applied for assessing the ability to detect and interpret socially improper behavior or speech in real life based stories. Preliminary results showed that MCI patients performed worse on both of the ToM tasks. However, after adjusting for level of education, only faux pas story performance based group differences remained statistically significant (p<.05). Bivariate correlation analyses indicated that, while impairment in working memory (r= -.456) and executive functioning (r=-.434) was related to the deterioration in the mind reading abilities; the relationship between cognitive functioning measures and faux pas recognition performance was not statistically significant. In this ongoing study, we observed two separate affective ToM patterns in MCI patients. Compared to healthy controls, MCI patients performed poorly on faux pas recognition test, which reflects real life social context. However, patients were similar to controls on mind reading ability. This preliminary data suggest that impairment of recognition of faux pas situations might be an early feature of MCI and could be independent from intact emotion recognition and executive functioning in this very early disease stage.