The Basel Version of the Awareness of Social Inference Test-Emotion Recognition (BASIT-ER): Preliminary validation analyses in healthy adults.

Abstract

Emotion recognition (ER) is commonly impaired in many brain disorders. Therefore, its reliable and ecologically valid examination is a crucial part of any comprehensive neuropsychological assessment. In this regard, an established English-language test identifying deficits in ER is "The Awareness of Social Inference Test-Emotion Evaluation Test" (TASIT-EET). However, no comparable German-language ER test currently exists. In this study, we aimed to develop and preliminarily validate the first German-language adaption of TASIT-EET in healthy adults. We selected 22 scenes [three scenes per emotion (i.e., anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and neutral) and one practice scene] out of the 56 TASIT-EET scenes. In collaboration with a film institute and professional actors, we filmed each scene (except neutral) at three different emotional intensities. Then, we administered these intensity version scenes to 240 cognitively and mentally healthy participants, equally distributed in sex and age, ranging from 35 to 92 years. By applying Rasch analysis, the one intensity version per scene was selected that showed neither floor nor ceiling effects in participants whose ability in ER was in the medium range. We have conducted a preliminary validation of the first German-language adaption of TASIT-EET, i.e., the "Basel Version of the Awareness of Social Inference Test-Emotion Recognition" (BASIT-ER). The BASIT-ER comprises the strengths of the TASIT-EET, while it overcomes its limitations such as ceiling effects in healthy participants and the simple response format. Next, the BASIT-ER needs to be validated in clinical populations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).