title: A novel task assessing intention and emotion attribution: Italian standardization and normative data of the Story-based Empathy Task.
abstract: Theory of Mind (ToM), the process by which an individual imputes mental states to himself and others, is presently considered as a multidimensional cognitive domain, with two main facets (i.e., cognitive and affective ToM) accounting, respectively, for the ability to understand others' intention (intention attribution-IA) and emotions (emotion attribution-EA). Despite the large amount of literature investigating the behavioural and neural bases of mentalizing abilities in neurological conditions, there is still a lack of validated neuropsychological tools specifically designed to assess such skills. Here, we report the normative data of the Story-Based Empathy Task (SET), a non-verbal test developed for the assessment of intention and emotion attribution in the neurodegenerative conditions characterized by the impairment of social-emotional abilities. It is an easy-to-administer task including 18 stimuli, sub-grouped into two experimental conditions assessing, respectively, the ability to infer others' intentions (SET-IA) and emotions (SET-EA), compared to a control condition of causal inference (SET-CI). Normative data were collected in 136 Italian subjects pooled across subgroups homogenous for age (range 20-79 years), sex, and education (at least 5 years). The results show a detrimental effect of age and a beneficial effect of education on both the global score and each subscale, for which we provide correction grids. This new task could be a useful tool to investigate both affective and cognitive aspects of ToM in the course of disorders of socio-emotional behaviour, such as the fronto-temporal dementia spectrum.
authors.affiliation: Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Via Olgettina 58, 20134, Milan, Italy. dodich.alessandra@hsr.it.|Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy. dodich.alessandra@hsr.it.
authors.forename: Alessandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dodich
authors.affiliation: Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Via Olgettina 58, 20134, Milan, Italy.|Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.|Department of Clinical Neurosciences, San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cerami
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.|NeTS Center-Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS), Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Canessa
authors.affiliation: Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Via Olgettina 58, 20134, Milan, Italy.|Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Crespi
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neurosciences, San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Sandro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Iannaccone
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neurosciences, San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Marcone
authors.affiliation: Experimental Biomedicine and Clinical Neuroscience Department (BioNeC), University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Sabrina
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Realmuto
authors.affiliation: Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Via Olgettina 58, 20134, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Giada
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lettieri
authors.affiliation: Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Via Olgettina 58, 20134, Milan, Italy.|Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.|Nuclear Medicine Unit, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Daniela
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Perani
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy.|NeTS Center-Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS), Pavia, Italy.
authors.forename: Stefano F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Cappa
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D033182:Intention; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D012016:Reference Values; D056345:Theory of Mind / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Affective ToM; Cognitive ToM; Empathy; Italian standardization; Mentalizing; Social cognition