Normal adult and adolescent performance on TASIT-S, a short version of The Assessment of Social Inference Test

Abstract

There is a need for short, reliable, sensitive assessment tools to measure social cognition. The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT) is an ecologically valid instrument that uses videos of actors engaged in everyday conversations to assess emotion perception, the ability to detect lies, sarcasm and sincerity, and the ability to judge what others are thinking, intending, feeling, and saying. A recently developed short version of TASIT retains the structure of the original test and its clinical sensitivity. In this paper, we compare TASIT-S performance in healthy adolescents, adults, and older adults as well as the effects of country (U.S.A. and Australia), English familiarity and gender. In this study 616 Australians including 226 adolescents (13–19) and 390 adults aged 20–75 + along with 180 U.S. residents (aged 20–74) completed one, two, or three parts of TASIT-S either face to face (Australians) or on-line (US residents). Results indicated that there were minor differences in TASIT-S performance (Part 3 only) based on country of residence and no significant effects for English familiarity in adolescents (not examined in adults). There were no gender effects. Young and middle aged adults (20–59) tended to perform better than adolescents and older adults on most parts of TASIT-S. In general, TASIT-S scores decreased moderately with advancing age. In conclusion, TASIT-S is a useful screen for social cognitive impairment in English speakers that is appropriate for use from adolescence through to older age. It produces comparable scores in the U.S.A. and Australia.