Deficits in social cognition following acquired brain injury : the role of facial emotion recognition and metacognition

Acquired brain injury (ABI) detrimentally impacts everyday functioning and has implications for those with lived experience and the economy. While the cognitive deficits contribute to these outcomes are well-researched following ABI, the mechanisms of socio-cognitive deficits are less understood. This study aimed to replicate a prior study by Rosenberg et al. (2014) which showed that difficulties in emotion perception ability occur across all emotional valences and at various emotion intensities. It also aimed to extend on this work by examining meta-socio-cognitive awareness, an aspect that is crucial for both successful communication and positive treatment outcomes. Emotion recognition abilities were assessed using the Emotion Recognition Task, with both anticipatory awareness (expected performance) and emergent awareness (judgements of performance as task is completed) assessed by obtaining confidence ratings from zero to 100%. This study found that ABI participants were less accurate in identifying surprise and disgust displayed at high intensities. Also, ABI participants had more difficulty in accurately anticipating their performance on surprise and disgust. The results provide novel insights into the extent to which awareness of social-cognition may be impaired following ABI, that may in turn contribute to social difficulties. Further research is needed to replicate and extend the current results.