Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) often show breakdown in the interpretation of pragmatic language meaning. However, there is no current standard of care for evaluating social communication dysfunction in PD which affects the persons with PD and their caregivers. Thus, we developed a questionnaire for individuals with PD to evaluate social communication difficulties. Objective: The aim of this study was to develop a questionnaire to demonstrate a need for comprehensive management guidelines for individuals with PD regarding social communication skills. This questionnaire will highlight the areas of deficit for the individuals with PD. Methods: Fifty-one people with self-reported Parkinson’s Disease answered 28 survey questions. These questions pertained to emotional expression and perception, social communication, sarcasm/humor, and pragmatic skills. Exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis were performed to identify which items loaded onto the desired factor and to check the internal consistency of the items. Results: Persons with PD reported changes in emotional expression and perception, social communication, sarcasm and humor, and pragmatic skills domains post PD diagnosis. No correlations were found between age/time since diagnosis and emotional expression, social communication, sarcasm, and humor.Conclusion: The current study provides evidence that persons with PD experience social communication challenges. Therefore, it is crucial to increase awareness of these deficits in PD to recognize the impact of the disease on social communication.
Besides motor symptoms, people with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) often exhibit social cognition difficulties. The assessment of social cognition in early PD is crucial, as these deficits may impact patients' social interactions and quality of life. The current study used naturalistic, dynamic video clips to examine the ability of individuals with idiopathic PD to perceive speaker intentions in comparison with healthy controls (HC). Neuropsychological evaluation of the PD patients was conducted using the Cognitive Linguistic Quick Test (CLQT). Video stimuli were taken from the Relational Inference in Social Communication database (RISC; Rothermich & Pell, 2015) and contained literal, sarcastic, and teasing scenes. The participant’s task was to identify the speaker’s belief, i.e., if they were sincere or insincere. The results show that in general, all participants had a harder time identifying nonliteral statements such as teasing as insincere when compared to literal statements. A group analysis demonstrated a marginally significant effect between people with PD and HCs, showing that individuals with PD were less accurate in recognizing social intent compared to HC. This difference was possibly driven by changes in cognitive abilities due to the progression of PD. Indeed, analyses for the PD group revealed positive correlations between several cognitive domains, such as attention and memory, and performance on the speaker belief task. Taken together, our study sheds light on the relationship between cognitive mechanisms and social perception impairments in PD and supports the development of targeted tools for diagnosing and treating these impairments.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.