title: Social perception in adults with Parkinson's disease.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Our study assessed how nondemented patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) interpret the affective and mental states of others from spoken language (adopt a "theory of mind") in ecologically valid social contexts. A secondary goal was to examine the relationship between emotion processing, mentalizing, and executive functions in PD during interpersonal communication.
  
  
  METHODS
  Fifteen adults with PD and 16 healthy adults completed The Awareness of Social Inference Test, a standardized tool comprised of videotaped vignettes of everyday social interactions (McDonald, Flanagan, Rollins, & Kinch, 2003). Individual subtests assessed participants' ability to recognize basic emotions and to infer speaker intentions (sincerity, lies, sarcasm) from verbal and nonverbal cues, and to judge speaker knowledge, beliefs, and feelings. A comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation was also conducted.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Patients with mild-moderate PD were impaired in the ability to infer "enriched" social intentions, such as sarcasm or lies, from nonliteral remarks; in contrast, adults with and without PD showed a similar capacity to recognize emotions and social intentions meant to be literal. In the PD group, difficulties using theory of mind to draw complex social inferences were significantly correlated with limitations in working memory and executive functioning.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In early PD, functional compromise of the frontal-striatal-dorsal system yields impairments in social perception and understanding nonliteral speaker intentions that draw upon cognitive theory of mind. Deficits in social perception in PD are exacerbated by a decline in executive resources, which could hamper the strategic deployment of attention to multiple information sources necessary to infer social intentions.
authors.affiliation: School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University.
authors.forename: Marc D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Pell
authors.affiliation: Département de Réadaptation, Université Laval.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Monetta
authors.affiliation: School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University.
authors.forename: Kathrin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Rothermich
authors.affiliation: School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester.
authors.forename: Sonja A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Kotz
authors.affiliation: McGill Centre for Research on Brain, Language, and Music.
authors.forename: Henry S
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Cheang
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales.
authors.forename: Skye
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: McDonald
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001364:Awareness; D003142:Communication; D032882:Comprehension; D003463:Cues; D004644:Emotions; D056344:Executive Function; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D033182:Intention; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D009633:Nonverbal Communication / Q000523:psychology; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D012938:Social Perception; D056345:Theory of Mind; D014705:Verbal Behavior