A cultural training for the improvement of cognitive and affective Theory of Mind in people with Multiple Sclerosis: a pilot randomized controlled study

Frontiers in Psychology

Psychology

Sara Isernia¹  Marco Rovaris¹  Francesca Baglio¹  Sonia Di Tella²  Annalisa Valle³  Antonella Marchetti³  Gisella Baglio³  Davide Massaro³  Alessia d’Arma⁴ 

[1] Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi Onlus (IRCCS), Milan, Italy;Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi Onlus (IRCCS), Milan, Italy;Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy;Unità di Ricerca sulla Teoria della Mente, Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy;Unità di Urologia, Ospedale San Raffaele (IRCCS), Milan, Italy;Unità di Ricerca sulla Teoria della Mente, Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy;

关键词: Multiple Sclerosis;    rehabilitation;    rehabilitation training;    ToM;    social cognition;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1198018

 received in 2023-03-31, accepted in 2023-07-20,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to understand and attribute mental states to ourselves and others, could be impaired in Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a neurodegenerative disease affecting young adults. Considering that ToM is strictly connected to Quality of Life (QoL) in MS and that could enhance the social support network -which is particularly important for this population-, we aimed to design and implement a novel ToM rehabilitation training. To make the training as much ecological as possible, we have devised a protocol enhancing ToM through stimuli depicting real-world conditions (video-clips taken from cinema movies, literary fictions, and audio voices). We test training’s effect on both cognitive and affective components of ToM in a sample of 13 subjects, randomly assigned to the ToM training Group and to the Control Group. The following ToM tasks were administered: the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RMET), the Strange Stories task, the Faux Pas Task and the False Belief First- and Second - Order Task (FB II and III order). We also administered a psycho-behavioral assessment through the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Results show that our novel ToM training is useful in enhancing ToM abilities measured by the following tasks: the RMET (affective task, p = 0.015) and the FB II-order task (FB, cognitive task, p = 0.032). Our ToM training had also a significant effect on the total score of the TAS-20 Scale (p = 0.018) and on its “Difficulty Describing Feelings subscale” (p = 0.018), indicating a reduction of the alexithymia traits. Future works with larger samples could investigate the ToM training effectiveness in a more representative MS populations.

【 授权许可】

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Copyright © 2023 d’Arma, Valle, Massaro, Baglio, Isernia, Di Tella, Rovaris, Baglio and Marchetti.