Objective: Individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) can experience social isolation, which is damaging to well-being and counterproductive to successful rehabilitation. It has been proposed that social cognitive deficits that commonly result from TBI may contribute to weakened social integration. However, the consequences of specific social cognitive deficits in TBI are still being delineated. The current work sought to better characterize the relationship between community integration and facial affect recognition (FAR) in TBI. Participants and Methods: A total of 27 participants with moderate to severe TBI and 30 healthy controls (HCs) completed two tests of FAR, which employed either static photographic stimuli or dynamic video stimuli (The Awareness of Social Inference Test). The Community Integration Questionnaire was also administered to participants. Results: Participants with TBI were significantly impaired on both the static and dynamic FAR measures, yet the deficits were most pronounced within the dynamic task. Furthermore, participants with TBI reported lower community integration compared with HCs. FAR was positively associated with community integration in both groups, such that participants with proficient affect recognition skills were better integrated into their communities. Conclusions: FAR deficits may contribute to the lack of community integration often observed in TBI; thus, interventions designed to improve FAR may be beneficial to this population’s ability to successfully reintegrate into society.

It has recently been reported that individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) are impaired on tasks requiring emotional processing and social cognition, including tasks of Theory of Mind (ToM) and facial affect recognition. The current pilot study examined the ability of individuals with MS to understand and interpret lies and sarcasm using a dynamic task: The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT). Fifteen individuals with MS and 15 healthy controls (HCs) performed the Social Inference-Enriched subtest of the TASIT, in which they viewed video-taped social interactions in which lies and sarcasm are presented. Additionally, tests of cognition were also administered to better understand the relationship between specific cognitive abilities and the ability to understand lies and sarcasm. The MS group showed impairments in the ability to interpret and understand lies and sarcasm relative to HCs. These impairments were correlated with several cognitive abilities including processing speed, working memory, learning and memory, and premorbid IQ. The results indicate that the TASIT is a sensitive measure of social cognition in individuals with MS. Furthermore, performance on the TASIT was related to cognitive abilities. Results are discussed in terms of social cognition deficits in MS and how they relate to cognitive abilities. (JINS, 2016, 22, 83–88)