title: The eyes test is influenced more by artistic inclination and less by sex.
abstract: The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test was developed by Baron-Cohen and his co-workers. This test provides them the unique opportunity to evaluate social cognition assessing the ability to recognize the mental state of others using only the expressions around the eyes. In healthy populations, however, it has produced conflicting results, particularly regarding sex differences and number of items to use. In this study we performed two studies: The first one investigated the presence of gender effects and the sensitivity of test stimuli; the second one considered other individual factors (i.e., artistic attitude, social empathy and personality traits) that could influence the ability to understand emotions from gaze. Our results demonstrated a sex effect, which can be more or less attenuated by the nature of the stimuli. This could be as aforementioned the result of the following, empathy or artistic attitude in being proficient in understanding the mental states of others.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento Scienze dell'Uomo e della Società, Università degli Studi Kore Enna, Italy.
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Guariglia
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Medicina Clinica, Sanità Pubblica, Scienza della Vita e dell'Ambiente, Università degli Studi dell'Aquila L'Aquila, Italy ; Unità di Neuropsicologia, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Piccardi
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento Scienze dell'Uomo e della Società, Università degli Studi Kore Enna, Italy.
authors.forename: Flavio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Giaimo
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento Scienze dell'Uomo e della Società, Università degli Studi Kore Enna, Italy.
authors.forename: Sofia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Alaimo
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento Scienze dell'Uomo e della Società, Università degli Studi Kore Enna, Italy.
authors.forename: Giusy
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Miccichè
authors.affiliation: Unità di Neuropsicologia, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia Rome, Italy ; Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Gabriella
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Antonucci
keywords: RMET; artistic attitude; emotions; empathy; sex differences