Emotion Recognition, Empathy, or ToM? The Influence of Social Cognition on Communication in Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

Abstract: Communication disorders following traumatic brain injury have been attributed to social-cognitive dysfunctions. However, this relationship is not always clearly demonstrated in empirical research. This systematic review seeks to clarify the relationship by considering different subcomponents of social cognition and communication. The results show that, for the social-cognitive subcomponents of emotion recognition and empathy, evidence is available mainly for a relationship to global communication abilities. However, we did find a systematic relationship between Theory of Mind and individual aspects of pragmatics (i. e., the processing of irony/sarcasm, insincerity, indirect speech acts). To strengthen the evidence for the role of social-cognitive subcomponents concerning communication, future research could implement a core outcome set based on the present findings.