Social Information Processing in Children: Cognitive and Rorschach Correlates in an Inpatient Psychiatric Setting

Social cognition refers to an individual’s ability to appropriately perceive and understand social information that drives communication and interpersonal relationships with others. Two primary skills involved in social cognition include Theory of Mind (ToM) and Affect Recognition (AR). Social cognition is typically measured in children using structured, neurocognitive tasks, although performance-based measures can also be utilized in order to evaluate a child’s skills in this area. Previous literature has found that the Rorschach is related to neurocognitive functioning in children and adults. This literature has not specifically focused on social cognitive abilities and is under-investigated in children. Therefore, the present study aims to further investigate the relationship between the NEPSY-II (ToM and AR subtests) and Rorschach in measuring social cognition among a sample of children in an inpatient setting through the use of archival psychological assessment data. A series of Spearman’s rank-ordered correlational analyses examining the relationship between ToM and AR performance with various Rorschach structural variables included in the IMP, Interpersonal, Affective Processing, and Self-Perception clusters, revealed a significant negative relationship between ToM and PTI, X-%, M-%, Afr, and WSumC, whereas a significant positive relationship was found between ToM and WDA/XA%, DQ+, Mp \u3e Ma, and FD. AR was significantly negatively correlated with X-%, PTI, and a High Afr, whereas AR was significantly positively related to WDA/XA%. Generally, results of the present study suggest that children with increased disinhibition of affect tend to exhibit poorer performance on ToM and AR, whereas children with more affective control and tendencies to engage in fantasy withdrawal display more advanced performance on ToM and AR. Furthermore, children with poor reality testing capabilities are prone to display social cognitive deficits on structured ToM and AR tasks