Comparison between the Short Story Task and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test for evaluating Theory of Mind: A replication report

Abstract

Introduction The ability to attribute emotional states, beliefs, and intentions to others has been termed Theory of Mind (ToM), mentalizing, and mind reading. The purpose of this study was to find an instrument to measure ToM in the Mexican population, that would yield similar results to those obtained in other cultures, and could discriminate between individuals. To achieve this objective, we replicated a study which compared two measures of ToM in a sample of English-speaking, neurologically intact adults. Methods A sample of young Mexican adults (n = 118) was evaluated on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) and a test that uses naturalistic narrative stimuli, the Short Story Task (SST), and on tests of general cognitive ability, executive functions, and empathy. Results We found a significant correlation between the ToM tests, and both tests correlated with verbal ability, general cognitive ability, and empathy, similar to what was seen in a previous study. Both tests discriminated between individuals and were challenging enough that we found no perfect scores. Conclusions These results show that both the RMET, which taps into emotion recognition and its categorization with language, and the SST, which relies on narrative fiction to test the ability to interpret mental states, show concurrent validity in a sample of neurologically intact young adults from a Latin-American culture; these tests may be useful in the clinical setting and for basic research into ToM.

Keywords

• social cognition
• empathy
• verbal competence
• verbal fluency
• spanish