An investigation into emotion recognition abilities post brain injury
Research type
Research Study
Full title
An investigation into emotion recognition abilities post brain injury - are they a unique construct, or accounted for by general intellectual abilities?
IRAS ID
286373
Contact name
Madeleine Hurd
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Hull
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 25 days
Research summary
Summary of Research
Following a brain injury, individuals may experience difficulty in many areas of their lives due to changes in their cognitive functioning. However, an area often neglected, in the routine assessment of patients, is how the brain injury has affected their understanding of the social world (McDonald et al., 2018). This is partly due to the limited amount of literature available confirming the status of social cognition as a unique function. Therefore, the proposed study wishes to explore whether an individual’s emotion recognition ability is independent of or determined by their general intellectual abilities. This is an important area to research as the findings will inform whether there is added value in incorporating measures of social cognition into a standard neuropsychological assessment following a brain injury. To achieve this, the study will employ a between-groups design including one set of participants with an acquired brain injury, ranging from moderate-severe severity, and a healthy control group. The brain injury group will be recruited from the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust (BIRT) or charitable third sector organisations such as Headway, depending on ease of recruitment. The ‘healthy control group’ will be recruited predominantly from the University of Hull. Testing will take place either in person, at an appropriate location, or remotely via video-link depending on Covid-19 restrictions. All participants will complete an emotion recognition measure as well as measures of general intelligence, which involve completing a series of short tasks. Testing will take between 45 minutes and one hour in total.PLEASE NOTE - THE BRAIN INJURY REHABILITATION TRUST IS A THIRD SECTOR REHABILITATION ORGANISATION. HOWEVER, SOME OF THEIR PATIENTS MAY BE FUNDED BY AN INDIVIDUAL FUNDING REQUEST NHS PANEL, OR CONTINUING HEALTHCARE NHS FUNDING. THIS IS THE EXTENT OF NHS INVOLVEMENT IN THE STUDY.
Summary of Results
There was no significant difference in performance on emotion recognition between the acquired brain injury group and the control group. There remained to be no significant difference when scores on measures of problem solving ability and processing speed were controlled for. Problem solving ability and processing speed were not found to be predictors of emotion recognition ability.REC name
East Midlands - Leicester South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/EM/0280
Date of REC Opinion
14 Dec 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion