Examination of Social Inferencing Skills in Men and Women After Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

Objective To examine sex differences in social inferencing deficits after traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to examine the odds of men and women being impaired while controlling for potential confounders.

Design Cross-sectional survey.

Setting Two TBI rehabilitation hospitals.

Participants One hundred five participants with TBI (60 men, 45 women) and 105 controls without TBI (57 men, 48 women) (N=210).

Interventions Not applicable.

Main Outcome Measures The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT), which includes (1) Emotion Evaluation Test (EET), (2) Social Inference-Minimal (SI-M) test, and (3) Social Inference-Enriched (SI-E) test.

Results Within the control sample, men and women performed similarly on all 3 TASIT subtests. Within the group with TBI, men had significantly lower scores than women on EET (P=.03), SI-M (P=.01), and SI-E (P=.04). Using impairment cutoffs derived from the sample without TBI, we found significantly more men with TBI (30%) were impaired on the EET than women (16.7%); impairment was similar between men and women on SI-M and SI-E. When adjusting for executive functioning and education, the odds of being impaired on the EET did not significantly differ for men and women (odds ratio, 0.47; 95% CI, 0.16-1.40; P=.18).

Conclusions Although more men with TBI have emotion perception deficits than women, the difference appears to be driven by education and executive functioning. Research is needed in larger samples with more definitive norms to better understand social inferencing impairments in men and women with TBI as well as translation to interpersonal behaviors.