Faux Pas test: what is it and what is it for?

The "faux pas test" helps us to understand how an individual develops in a group.

Human beings are gregarious and sociable.. From family clans and tribes to the increasingly globalized society in which we live today, throughout history we have been building and trying to improve different types of organizational systems that allow us to be in contact with others, maintaining an increasing number of relationships.

But the contact and the correct understanding of social interactions can be more complex than it seems, and in some cases it can be difficult to put ourselves in the other person's place or to interpret correctly what is happening.

In this sense, there are different proposals and instruments that allow to evaluate the degree of social competence and understanding, in order to detect possible deficits in this regard and contribute to train or treat the difficulties that may exist. One of the instruments that allow such assessment is the Faux Pas Test, which we will discuss in this article..

The Faux-Pas test: general description

The Faux-Pas test is a well-known psychological evaluation instrument, which allows to assess the degree of It assesses the degree of social adaptation and social understanding through the interpretation of social situations..

The test in question has a total of twenty short stories in which there is some kind of social interaction, in ten of which there is some kind of inappropriate, inconsiderate or clumsy act on the part of one of the characters towards another or others. It has reduced versions and different adaptations, including one in Spanish: the Meteduras de Pata Test.

This is an instrument that assesses the ability to understand, empathy and the existence of a theory of mind in the subjects evaluated. The latter refers to the ability to understand the mental state of others and to attribute to them the ability to think and have intentions and emotions different from our own.

Developed in 1999 by Baron-Cohen, the Faux-Pas test test was originally intended to assess the ability to understand social situations and to differentiate between the performance in this task among children (aged between seven and eleven years). (between seven and eleven years old) with Asperger's syndrome and normotypical children. However, over the years its target audience has been expanding, with versions for children and for adults, and it has been used to assess the capacity for social understanding in different problems.

Thus, in addition to its use to assess social competence in people with autism or Asperger's syndrome, it has also been used in people with behavioral disorders, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder and even psychopathy, among others. It is also used in people with frontal lobe lesions and especially in the orbitofrontal lobe, and also in some cases of dementia.

Administration of the test

The administration of the Faux Pas test is relatively simple.. The subject is presented one by one with each of the stories that are part of the test, reading them to him and giving him a copy so that he can read and see them for himself.

Once each story has been read, the subject is asked if anyone in the story has done or said anything inappropriate. If the answer is negative, two control questions are asked to assess the level of understanding of what happened in the story.

If the answer is positive, the subject is asked who has done something inappropriate, why or what they should have taken into account, what they should have done or said, if the protagonist of the story has realized why their act was inappropriate and how the person must have felt.

Each of these questions aims to assess whether the person to whom the test is applied has the capacity to understand the fact that an action is inappropriate or considered clumsy at a given moment (third question), whether he/she can assess the intentionality of the speaker (fourth question), interpret his/her beliefs and knowledge (fifth question) and whether he/she is able to be empathetic and understand his/her emotions (sixth question). After these questions, you will finish by asking the same control questions as in the previous case (in this case, the seventh and eighth).

How to score?

The correction of this test requires analyzing each of the answers given by the subject.. The first of the questions will be scored according to whether the answer given is correct or incorrect, regardless of whether we are dealing with a story in which inappropriate acts or blunders occur or whether we are dealing with a control story.

The second one, which asks about the person who made the blunder, will be considered correct any answer that identifies the person in question, without remembering the name itself being necessary.

A different case occurs in this question in the case of the control stories, since not answering will be scored positively while answering will be penalized (after all, in the control stories no one is committing any inappropriate act or blunder).

To evaluate each of the skills assessed in this test, all the scores for the question corresponding to that skill will be added together and then divided by the sum of the products of the correct answers to the control questions in the stories with inappropriate content and the product of the correct answers to the control questions in the control stories.

The maximum score is 30, and the lower the score, the greater the difficulty in the different areas analyzed.. However, it is not advisable to focus on a final score; it is preferable to evaluate each area separately.

Bibliographical references:

• Baron-Cohen, S., O'Riordan, M., Stone, V., Jones, R. & Plaisted, K (1999). Recognition of Faux Pas by normally developing children and children with Asperger Syndrome or High-functioning autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 29 (5), 407-418.

• Fernández-Modamio, M., Arrieta-Rodríguez, M., Bengochea Seco, R., Santacoloma-Cabero, I., Gómez de Tojeiro-Roce, J., García-Polavieja, B., González-Fraile, E., Martín-Carrasco, M., Griffin, K., & Gil, D. (2018). Faux-Pas Test: A proposal of a Standardized Short Version. Clinical Schizophrenia & Related Psychoses.

• Guinea Hidalgo, Q., Tirapu Ustárroz, J. and Pollán Rufo, M. (2007). Theory of mind in schizophrenia. Análisis y Modificación de Conducta, 33 (148).

• Stone, V.E., Baron-Cohen, S. y Knight, R.T. (1998). Frontal lobe contributions to theory of mind. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10, 640-656.

• Stone, V.E. y Baron-Cohen, S. (1998). Faux Pas Recognition Test (Adult Version).