Research using participants from one of Australia's largest and longest running studies of aging has looked at the impact of mild cognitive impairment and dementia on a person's ability to interact in social contexts. Social cognition refers to the set of social skills and abilities that people use to understand and interpret other people's thoughts and feelings, and then use that information to determine their own social behaviourin response. Previously, few studies have considered social cognition in people with Alzheimer's disease and even less is understood about social cognitive functioning in older adults with mild cognitive impairment.
The new research, led by Dr. Russell Chander at the Centre for Healthy Brain Aging (CHeBA) and published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry , assessed more than 300 community-dwelling adults aged 70–90 from CHeBA's Sydney Memory and Aging Study. According to the researchers, this age bracket is a relatively understudied group in social cognition research.
"Because social cognition involves such things as the ability to read social cues, process thoughts and intentions of other people and have the capacity to demonstrate empathy, it is an important factor in Alzheimer's disease as well as certain types of dementias, particularly frontotemporal dementia ," says Dr. Chander, lead author of the study at UNSW Sydney's Centre for Healthy Brain Aging (CHeBA). The findings revealed significant differences in social cognitive perfo.