Yu-Chi, Liu
Department of Psychiatry Fu Jen Catholic University Hospital
Yi-Han, Tseng
Department of Psychiatry E-Da Hospital
Ming-Cheng, Tsai
Department of Neurosurgery Shin-Kong Wu Ho Su Memorial Hospital
Zai-Ting, Yeh
Department of Clinical Psychology Fu-Jen Catholic University
Objective: Social awareness, an important ability in individual social behavior, includes understanding the intentions of others, processing and understanding cognitive information, and a high level of social intelligence. For example, knowledge of social customs, predicting the behavior of others, and problem-solving skills are all aspects of social awareness. Social awareness requires the use of language, non-verbal signals, and social contexts to understand different social situations. Individuals with poor social awareness may respond to others in a manner that is ineffective, poorly-timed, or inappropriate. With the development of technology, film-based testing tools can both demonstrate the ecological validity of social interaction and simultaneously attract the general public. The purpose of this study has been to translate and transmute the Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT) into a Mandarin Chinese version and examine its reliability and validity. Method: The test was translated twice, both from English to Chinese then back to English. Once the meanings and texts of the test were confirmed, the test was filmed in Mandarin Chinese and Chinese subtitles were added. This Chinese version was evaluated by 107 undergraduates. Construct validity was established by evaluating 23 patients with brain injuries in a hospital in Northern Taipei. Results: Content validity showed that all types of emotions and situations had more than 80% agreement. The alpha value of reliability was above average, between the range of .70 to .86. Evaluations of construct validity found evidence to support the claim that patients with brain injury suffer impairments to social awareness. Also, the use of TASIT to measure social awareness was better than Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks. Conclusion: The Mandarin Chinese version of TASIT has good reliability and validity and can used to evaluate social awareness-related abilities.
keywords: social awareness, reliability, validity, patients with brain injury