d'Arma Alessia, Valle Annalisa, Massaro Davide, Baglio Gisella, Isernia Sara, Di Tella Sonia, Rovaris Marco, Baglio Francesca, Marchetti Antonella
Unità di Urologia, Ospedale San Raffaele (IRCCS), Milan, Italy.
Unità di Ricerca sulla Teoria della Mente, Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2023 Aug 23;14:1198018. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1198018. eCollection 2023.
Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to understand and attribute mental states to ourselves and others, could be impaired in Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a neurodegenerative disease affecting young adults. Considering that ToM is strictly connected to Quality of Life (QoL) in MS and that could enhance the social support network -which is particularly important for this population-, we aimed to design and implement a novel ToM rehabilitation training. To make the training as much ecological as possible, we have devised a protocol enhancing ToM through stimuli depicting real-world conditions (video-clips taken from cinema movies, literary fictions, and audio voices). We test training's effect on both cognitive and affective components of ToM in a sample of 13 subjects, randomly assigned to the ToM training Group and to the Control Group. The following ToM tasks were administered: the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RMET), the Strange Stories task, the Faux Pas Task and the False Belief First- and Second - Order Task (FB II and III order). We also administered a psycho-behavioral assessment through the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Results show that our novel ToM training is useful in enhancing ToM abilities measured by the following tasks: the RMET (affective task, = 0.015) and the FB II-order task (FB, cognitive task, = 0.032). Our ToM training had also a significant effect on the total score of the TAS-20 Scale ( = 0.018) and on its "Difficulty Describing Feelings subscale" ( = 0.018), indicating a reduction of the alexithymia traits. Future works with larger samples could investigate the ToM training effectiveness in a more representative MS populations.
心理理论（ToM），即理解并将心理状态归因于自己和他人的能力，在多发性硬化症（MS）患者中可能受损，MS是一种影响年轻人的神经退行性疾病。鉴于心理理论与MS患者的生活质量（QoL）密切相关，且可以加强社会支持网络——这对该人群尤为重要——我们旨在设计并实施一种新型的心理理论康复训练。为了使训练尽可能贴近实际生活，我们设计了一种方案，通过描绘现实世界状况的刺激（从电影、文学小说中选取的视频片段以及音频）来增强心理理论。我们在13名受试者的样本中测试了训练对心理理论的认知和情感成分的影响，这些受试者被随机分配到心理理论训练组和对照组。进行了以下心理理论任务：眼睛解读心智测试（RMET）、离奇故事任务、失礼任务以及错误信念一阶和二阶任务（FB II和III阶）。我们还通过多伦多述情障碍量表（TAS - 20）进行了心理行为评估。结果表明，我们的新型心理理论训练有助于提高通过以下任务所测量的心理理论能力：眼睛解读心智测试（情感任务，p = 0.015）和错误信念二阶任务（FB，认知任务，p = 0.032）。我们的心理理论训练对TAS - 20量表的总分（p = 0.018）及其“描述情感困难子量表”（p = 0.018）也有显著影响，表明述情障碍特征有所减少。未来对更大样本的研究可以在更具代表性的MS人群中调查心理理论训练的有效性。
