Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College/School

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department/Program

Psychology

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Ruth E. Propper

Committee Member

Jean Lengenfelder

Committee Member

Erin Kang

Abstract

Social cognition focuses on how people process, perceive, and apply information in social context in order to understand and infer their own behaviors and that of others. Impaired social cognition is a common, and often chronic, outcome of many neurological and psychiatric disorders, including traumatic brain injury (TBI). By lacking these social skills, there is a major disadvantage for social integration with others. In order to assess social cognition deficits in adult TBI populations, Part 1 and 3 of The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT) were administered to examine social cognition impairments. A sample of 58 participants (28 TBI, 30 healthy control) were compared on their ability to accurately recognize emotions and interpret social situations. Mixed analyses of variance (MANOVA) revealed that those diagnosed with mild and severe traumatic brain injury may have difficulties with both basic aspects of social perception and more complex higher-order cognitive abilities when compared to healthy controls, showing less accuracy for both Part 1 and 3 of TASIT. These findings support previous literature that state how social perception deficits affect TBI populations, which has implications for both remediation of such impairments and for educating those who interact with people diagnosed with TBI.

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