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The present study examined the depressive realism hypothesis, which posits that depressed people are often more accurate in their perceptions and judgments than non-depressed people are. Each subject initially generated descriptions of others important to them, both positive and negative important others, in the pretest section, and 3 or 4 weeks later, some subjects were invited into the formal experiment to measure the accuracy of their perceptions in a pseudo-social interaction situation. A total of 52 patients diagnosed with clinical depression and 62 normal matched subjects participated in the experimental procedure. The results indicate that clinically depressed patients provided more accurate, less distorted descriptions of their positive important others than did those in the normal group. However, when information involved the negative important others, the results exhibited a trend, but these results did not provide significant support for the depressive realism hypothesis. The results support the depressive realism hypothesis when tasks involve subjects' own positive important others.

Impairments in interpersonal relationships are a core feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Social cognition dysfunction, like false recognition of others' emotions and intentions, may lead to emotional disturbances, self-injury, and impulsive aggression behaviors in patients with BPD. This study explored the extent to which social cognition, including emotional recognition and theory of mind (ToM), can predict the ability of social awareness in patients with BPD. Emotion recognition tasks (matching emotional facial expressions to prosody), verbal and nonverbal theory of mind tasks, and the awareness of social inference test were assessed. Results of a stepwise multiple regression showed that the quality of the early parent-child relationship, anger prosody recognition, and ToM were significantly related to the ability to be aware of social interactions in the patients with BPD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory of mind (ToM) is a crucial aspect of social cognition and is mediated by a complex neural network. Studies on temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) suggest that its neuropathological involvement includes several brain regions. Some regions seem to overlap the neural network responsible for ToM, and this overlap provides an opportunity to explore ToM in TLE patients. Another concern is psychosocial problems in TLE, and the study of ToM in TLE could serve as a basis for further understanding the nature of such psychosocial disturbances. Studies on whether TLE patients evidence ToM deficit, however, are scant and controversial. Consequently, we examine whether ToM deficit is evident in TLE. Thirty-one TLE patients and 24 matched controls were recruited and completed four tasks measuring different levels of ToM: false belief, faux pas recognition, processing of implied meanings, and cartoon ToM. The patients were impaired in both basic and advanced ToM. Right TLE had a more wide-ranging picture of deficit than left TLE. ToM appears to be vulnerable to TLE, especially on the right side. Since ToM might contribute to patients’ psychosocial adjustment, we thus suggest that a ToM measure be included in regular neuropsychological assessments of such patients. (JINS, 2013, 19, 1–7) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]