Measuring Empathy in People with Young-Onset Dementia: Validity of the Newly Developed Nummenmaa Emotion Experience Test (NEET) and the Revised Empathic Accuracy Task (EAT-R)

Objectives. An important affected domain in various subtypes of young-onset dementia (YOD) is social cognition (SC), which is the ability to perceive, process and respond appropriately to social information. SC impairments can significantly impact social behaviour and interpersonal relationships. Therefore, it is imperative to accurately assess SC impairments in patients with YOD. Currently, valid and well-normed tests exist only for assessing emotion recognition. Therefore, two new tests were developed for measuring other aspects of SC: bodily emotion experience and empathy. The aim of the current study was to analyse the association of the two new tests with other SC measures (convergent validity) and a purely cognitive test (divergent validity).

Methods. 62 healthy participants were included. The Nummenmaa Emotion Experience Test (NEET) measures bodily emotion experience, and the Revised Empathic Accuracy Task (EAT-R) measures cognitive and affective empathy. With parametric and non-parametric correlation analyses, associations with the Facial Expressions of Emotion: stimuli and test (FEEST), the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), a ToM battery (including items of the Hinting Task, Faux-Pas, Cartoons and Story-based Empathy Task) and the Trail-Making Test B were studied.

Results. There is no significant association between TMT and NEET (rs=-.149, p=.249) and EAT-R (rs=-.042, p=.749). There is a significant, but small, association between NEET and FEEST (rs=.277, p=.029) Furthermore, EAT-R total is significantly associated with ToM Cartoons (rs = .255, p=.046). The external orientation subscale of the TAS-20 is significantly associated with EAT-R total (r =-.284, p=.025) and EAT-R Affective (r=-.376, p=.003). EAT-R Cognitive is significantly associated with Hinting Task (rs=.274, p=.031), Faux-Pas (rs=.263, p=.039) and Story-based empathy task (rs=.265, p=.038).

Conclusions. The NEET and EAT-R are not associated with a purely cognitive test, but are associated with (sub)tests of SC measuring similar or related aspects. These preliminary results on construct validity seem promising.