Service de Médecine Physique et de Réadaptation, CHU Pellegrin, Bordeaux cedex, France. fmuller.gassies@ugecamaq
Cortex. 2010 Oct;46(9):1088-99. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2009.08.014. Epub 2009 Sep 15.
Previous studies have reported a dissociation between social behavioral impairments after severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and relatively preserved performances in traditional tasks that investigate cognitive abilities. Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability to make inferences about other's mental states and use them to understand and predict others' behavior. We tested a group of 15 patients with severe TBI and 15 matched controls on a series of four verbal and non-verbal ToM tasks: the faux pas test, the first-order and second-order false belief task, the character intention task and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test. Participants with severe TBI were also compared to controls on non-ToM inference tasks of indirect speech act from the Montreal Evaluation of Communication (M.E.C.) Protocol and empathy (Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index - I.R.I.) and tests for executive functions. Subjects with TBI performed worse than control subjects on all ToM tasks, except the first-order false belief task. The findings converge with previous evidence for ToM deficit in TBI and dissociation between ToM and executive functions. We show that ToM deficit is probably distinct from other aspects of social cognition like empathy and pragmatic communication skills.
先前的研究报告表明，严重创伤性脑损伤 (TBI) 后的社交行为障碍与传统认知能力测试中相对保留的表现之间存在脱节。心理理论 (ToM) 是指根据他人的心理状态进行推断，并利用这些推断来理解和预测他人行为的能力。我们对一组 15 名严重 TBI 患者和 15 名匹配的对照组进行了一系列四项口头和非口头 ToM 任务的测试：失礼测试、一阶和二阶错误信念任务、角色意图任务和“读心术眼测试”。严重 TBI 患者还接受了来自蒙特利尔交流评估（M.E.C. 协议）的间接言语行为、同理心（戴维斯人际反应指数 - I.R.I.）和执行功能测试等非 ToM 推理任务的比较。所有 ToM 任务中，TBI 患者的表现均不如对照组，除了一阶错误信念任务。这些发现与 TBI 中 ToM 缺陷以及 ToM 和执行功能之间的分离的先前证据一致。我们表明，ToM 缺陷可能与同理心和语用交际技能等其他社交认知方面不同。
