An Investigation of Emotion Recognition and Theory of Mind in People with Chronic Heart Failure

Cognitive deficits are common in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF), but no study has investigated whether these deficits extend to social cognition. The present study provided the first empirical assessment of emotion recognition and theory of mind (ToM) in patients with CHF. In addition, it...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2015-11, Vol.10 (11), p.e0141607-e0141607
Main Authors: Habota, Tina, McLennan, Skye N, Cameron, Jan, Ski, Chantal F, Thompson, David R, Rendell, Peter G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aged
Autism
Brain research
Cardiac patients
Care and treatment
Chronic Disease
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive ability
Comparative analysis
Dementia
Development and progression
Emotion recognition
Emotions
Executive function
Female
Genetic aspects
Group dynamics
Health aspects
Heart diseases
Heart failure
Heart Failure - physiopathology
Humans
Investigations
Male
Memory
Mental depression
Middle Aged
Mortality
Patient outcomes
Patients
Psychiatry
Social interactions
Social isolation
Theory of Mind
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Cognitive deficits are common in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF), but no study has investigated whether these deficits extend to social cognition. The present study provided the first empirical assessment of emotion recognition and theory of mind (ToM) in patients with CHF. In addition, it assessed whether each of these social cognitive constructs was associated with more general cognitive impairment. A group comparison design was used, with 31 CHF patients compared to 38 demographically matched controls. The Ekman Faces test was used to assess emotion recognition, and the Mind in the Eyes test to measure ToM. Measures assessing global cognition, executive functions, and verbal memory were also administered. There were no differences between groups on emotion recognition or ToM. The CHF group's performance was poorer on some executive measures, but memory was relatively preserved. In the CHF group, both emotion recognition performance and ToM ability correlated moderately with global cognition (r = .38, p = .034; r = .49, p = .005, respectively), but not with executive function or verbal memory. CHF patients with lower cognitive ability were more likely to have difficulty recognizing emotions and inferring the mental states of others. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0141607