Links Between Self-awareness and Sociocognitive Processes in Neurodegenerative Diseases

Self-awareness impairments are common in neurodegenerative diseases, yet their relationship with social cognition remains poorly understood. This study aims to characterize metacognitive processes associated with social cognition in bvFTD and AD, and to determine whether these processes differ across diagnostic groups. The primary objective is to evaluate metacognitive efficiency during a facial emotion recognition task using trial-by-trial retrospective confidence judgments, allowing computation of Mratio. This index reflects the alignment between perceived and actual performance. Secondary objectives include: (1) assessing additional metacognitive measures (prospective and global judgments), (2) comparing metacognition between bvFTD and AD, (3) examining correlations between metacognitive judgments and social cognitive performance, (4) testing domain specificity by comparing social cognition and memory, (5) evaluating the effect of task complexity, (6) assessing the impact of performance feedback, (7) comparing subjective versus objective metacognitive assessments, (8) investigating the role of anosognosia in AD, and (9) exploring associations with hypnotic suggestibility. Participants will attend two visits (\~2 hours each). The first visit includes eligibility assessment, sociodemographic data collection, and a computerized emotion recognition task with metacognitive judgments. The second visit includes additional computerized tasks assessing theory of mind and memory, and an optional hypnotic suggestibility assessment. Statistical analyses will include between-group comparisons using non-parametric tests, within-subject analyses, and exploratory correlational and regression analyses.