Translation and transcultural adaptation to Brazilian Portuguese of the Theory of Mind Task Battery for assessment of social cognition in the elderly

Abstract

Social cognition is an important area that involves the ability to recognize the mental states of other persons, such as desires, beliefs, and feelings, and consequently, it differentiates them from their own mental states 1 .In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association launched the 5 th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) with important changes in the criteria for the diagnosis of dementia. Among the changes, it is worth highlighting the inclusion of social cognition. The section regarding neurocognitive disorders in the DSM-5 describes the recommended tests for each area's assessment, considering that the tasks of facial emotion recognition and the theory of the mind were recommended for the assessment of social cognition 2 .Despite the indication in the DSM-5, few resources are available for the assessment of this cognitive area among the elderly 3 . This letter presents a translation and transcultural adaptation for Brazilian Portuguese of the Theory of Mind Task Battery (ToM TB). This is the first study that proposes the use of the ToM TB to evaluate theory of mind specifically in elderly. This task was chosen for these specific purposes because it is easy to understand and quick to apply.The ToM TB was initially developed for use in children who have different cognitive profiles according to their age group 4 . This tool comprises nine different situations, which are introduced through short vignettes, and a total of 15 questions that can be classified as correct or incorrect with a total score varying from 0 to 15. These tasks are arranged in increasing order of difficulty, enabling the assessment of the recognition of simple facial expressions up to the second-order false beliefs.The translation and transcultural adaptation were performed as recommended by Beaton et al. 5 after authorization from the authors of the battery. The procedure involved stages of translation performed by two bilingual professors from the mental health area with experience in the use, translation, adaptation and validation of assessment tools. The translations were performed independently. A common version was produced based on consensus, considering semantic, idiomatic, experimental, and conceptual/cultural equivalence. This version was back-translated into English and reviewed by an author of original version. Finally, an analysis was performed on the applicability of the final version of the instrument in six older adults between 60 and 67 years old, three men and three women, with different levels of education. The participants signed a voluntary and informed consent form.The versions from the two translators showed a high level of agreement and few discrepancies, most of which were related to semantic equivalence. No item in the instrument was considered non-applicable. Regarding the cultural equivalence, the changes were mainly related to characters' names of the vignettes in order to adapt to the Brazilian culture. For example, the name Brynn was replaced with "Bia", Franklin wit...

Convergent validity of the Brazilian version of the Theory of Mind Task Battery for the assessment of social cognition in older adults

“…Our research group recently published the translation and crosscultural adaptation of the Brazilian version of the Theory of Mind Task Battery (ToM TB) in this journal 3 . Thus, the objective of this study was to investigate the convergent validation of the ToM TB in a sample of community-dwelling older adults in the community.…”