Preliminary construct validity of the FRAMES battery across diagnostic groups and cross-cultural samples

Title : Preliminary construct validity of the FRAMES battery across diagnostic groups and cross-cultural samples

Abstract:

Background: Neurodegenerative disorders characterized by primary socioemotional dysfunction, such as frontotemporal dementia (FTD), remain difficult to accurately diagnose due to the lack of objective, standardized assessments. As a result, these patients are frequently misdiagnosed and may receive delayed or inappropriate treatment, contributing to a significant burden for patients, caregivers, and healthcare systems. The Face Recognition, Affect Matching, Emotion Labeling, and Sincerity (FRAMES) battery was developed to systematically quantify multiple domains of socioemotional processing. We evaluated its performance across clinically defined groups to assess its utility as a diagnostic tool.
Methods: FRAMES data were analyzed from participants classified as healthy controls (HC), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), semantic behavioral variant FTD (sbvFTD), and behavioral variant FTD (bvFTD) (N=26). Subtest scores were compared using one-way ANCOVAs adjusting for age and sex. Item-level difficulty and group-specific performance patterns were examined to assess sensitivity and construct validity.
Results: FRAMES demonstrated a broad range of item difficulty (p≈0.14–1.00), with no evidence of ceiling effects, supporting sensitivity across performance levels. Significant group effects were observed for Face Perception (F=9.44, p<0.001), Affect Matching (F=8.25, p=0.001), and Emotion Labelling (F=6.83, p=0.002). Distinct performance patterns emerged across diagnostic groups, with sbvFTD showing disproportionate impairments on higher-order socioemotional tasks. These patterns enabled differentiation between sbvFTD and bvFTD, particularly in affect matching and emotion labelling (p=0.002, p=0.004, respectively).
Conclusions: FRAMES demonstrates preliminary construct validity, with appropriate item difficulty, cross-cultural applicability, and sensitivity to socioemotional deficits. These findings support its potential as a clinically informative tool for detecting and differentiating socioemotional dysfunction across neurodegenerative disorders. With further validation in a larger sample, FRAMES may contribute to earlier and more accurate diagnosis, improved phenotyping, and more targeted clinical management.

Biography:

Tanisha Mehta is a second-year undergraduate student at University of California, Berkeley studying Molecular and Cell Biology. She conducts research in the Rankin Lab at the University of California, San Francisco, where she helps develop and evaluate quantitative tools to assess socioemotional dysfunction in dementia, including the FRAMES battery. Her work focuses on improving the measurement and detection of socioemotional deficits to support more accurate diagnosis. She is broadly interested in the intersection of neuroscience and clinical medicine and aims to pursue a career as a physician–scientist.