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Social Cognition in Nursing Home Residents With and Without Cognitive Impairment

¹ Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, San Francisco, California.
² School of Nursing, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.

Address correspondence to Allyson Washburn, PhD, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, 747 Front Street, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94111. E-mail: awashburn{at}saybrook.edu; amwashburn{at}att.net

Dementia affects the specific cognitive abilities underlying social functioning in ways that are just beginning to be understood. This pilot study compared the performances of 15 nursing home residents with cognitive impairment and 25 without cognitive impairment on a broad range of measures of social-cognitive functioning. The cognitively impaired group scored significantly lower than the unimpaired group on tests of face processing, person perception, and social reasoning but not on tests of affect recognition and the representation of social situations. Individuals' deficits in working memory and executive function did not fully account for their impaired performance on tests of social cognition. An improved understanding and assessment of the basic cognitive mechanisms underlying the ability of persons with dementia to interact with others would inform the design of interventions to optimize their social functioning.