City Research Online

Abstract

Objective
To describe current practices and key barriers in social cognition (SC) assessment, given its central role in psychiatric and neurological disorders and the limitations of existing measures.

Methods
Fifty-two SC experts from 20 countries completed an online survey regarding SC tests and questions about their usage frequency and perceived obstacles.

Results
Only facial emotion recognition tasks were used frequently, while the Hinting task and Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) were used by over half of participants. However, 10 experts also urged discontinuation of RMET, mostly due to validity concerns. Major obstacles included lack of culture-appropriate norms and poor psychometric properties.

Conclusions
SC assessment is limited by cultural bias and weak psychometrics. Developing and validating culturally sensitive tools, harmonizing protocols, and securing funding are essential to advance research, enable international trials, and improve clinical outcomes.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Publisher Keywords:	Social cognition, Assessment, Neuropsychology, Validation, Harmonisation, Crosscultural
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HM Sociology R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Departments:	School of Health & Medical Sciences School of Health & Medical Sciences > Department of Psychology & Neuroscience
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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