The aim of the present study was to examine social cognition and social functioning in a group of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) patients. Thirty one people with aMCI, 29 individuals with AD, and 45 healthy older adults participated in the study. Facial expressions of happiness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise presented in different intensities had to be labelled. Mentalizing was assessed using first-order belief theory of mind (ToM) stories and everyday social functioning by the Inventory of Interpersonal Situations (IIS), completed by an informant. aMCI patients were impaired in recognizing the emotions anger, disgust, and fear, while AD patients were impaired in recognizing the emotions anger, disgust, and surprise. More importantly, no significant differences between aMCI and AD patients were found on overall emotion recognition. Both the aMCI and AD patients were impaired on the ToM task, but no differences between the aMCI and AD patients were found. On everyday social functioning, only the AD patients showed impairments. No associations between the IIS and ToM were found, but the IIS and emotion perception were significantly correlated. Regression analysis taking all potentially confounding variables into account showed that only mood, but not the social-cognitive task performance or any other cognitive variable, predicted social functioning. aMCI and AD patients demonstrated impairments in mentalizing and facial emotion perception, and showed decrements in everyday social functioning. Informing caregivers about these deficits may help them to understand deficits in social cognition that may be present already in the MCI stage of Alzheimer’s disease.

中文翻译：

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遗忘型轻度认知障碍或阿尔茨海默病患者的社会认知和社会功能

本研究的目的是检查一组遗忘性轻度认知障碍 (aMCI) 和阿尔茨海默氏痴呆 (AD) 患者的社会认知和社会功能。31 名 aMCI 患者、29 名 AD 患者和 45 名健康老年人参加了这项研究。必须对以不同强度呈现的快乐、愤怒、恐惧、厌恶和惊讶的面部表情进行标记。心理化是使用一阶信念理论（ToM）故事和日常社会功能通过人际情况清单（IIS）评估的，由一名线人完成。aMCI 患者识别愤怒、厌恶和恐惧情绪受损，而 AD 患者识别愤怒、厌恶和惊讶情绪受损。更重要的是，aMCI 和 AD 患者在整体情绪识别方面没有发现显着差异。aMCI 和 AD 患者在 ToM 任务上均受损，但未发现 aMCI 和 AD 患者之间存在差异。在日常社交功能方面，只有 AD 患者表现出障碍。没有发现 IIS 和 ToM 之间的关联，但 IIS 和情绪感知显着相关。考虑到所有潜在混杂变量的回归分析表明，只有情绪，而不是社会认知任务表现或任何其他认知变量，才能预测社会功能。aMCI 和 AD 患者表现出心智化和面部情绪感知受损，并表现出日常社交功能下降。