Investigation of the reliability of the "reading the mind in the eyes test" in a Turkish population.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test"(RMET) is one of the most widely used tasks for examining the Theory of Mind. In this study, the goal was to determine the reliability of a Turkish version of the RMET and the distribution of the results in a healthy population. METHOD: The original test is made up of 36 pictures of solely the eye region of different individuals. Subjects are asked to choose the option that best describes the mental state of individual in the picture. After 3 piloting studies each conducted with different sets of 8 people, 2 items (25 and 35) in which most of the subjects consistently replied to foil words, were excluded in final step. 117 healthy volunteers were given the test, and 70 of these individuals were re-tested two weeks later. The Bland and Altman method was used to examine test re-test reliability RESULTS: The mean value of the number of correct responses was 24.46 (SD=3.44) for the test and 24.13 (SD=4.36) for the re-test. No significant difference was shown between test and re-test results (p=0.815). After excluding items 19 and 21 which failed to show reliability, the mean correct response rates were 23.64 (SD=3.38) and 23.40 (SD=4.32), respectively. The educational level significantly affected the correct response rates. CONCLUSION: The Turkish version of the RMET was found to be reliable in a healthy population. The educational level should be taken into account. The 32-item version of the Turkish RMET can be used to evaluate the social, cognitive and emotional processes in adults.