Social interaction perception in adult-onset craniopharyngioma

Adult-onset craniopharyngioma (AoC) is a rare intracranial tumour associated with long-term physical and psychological difficulties. Although prior questionnaire-based studies suggest impairments in social and emotional functioning, no research has experimentally examined social interaction perception in this population. This study employed an online experimental task combined with automated linguistic analysis to explore differences in social interaction perception between AoC patients and healthy volunteers (HVs). Nineteen AoC patients and twenty matched HVs viewed 30 short, naturalistic video clips depicting everyday social interactions. After each video, participants were asked to describe what they saw in as much detail as possible. Responses were analysed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software to assess emotional and social language use across eight pre-registered categories. AoC participants used a higher proportion of social and emotional language across six categories (e.g., affect, social behaviour) despite producing shorter responses overall. Inferential statistics found no significant differences between groups, and Bayesian analysis confirmed there were no differences in the use of pro-social or emotion words between AoC participants and HVs. Contrary to hypotheses, AoC patients did not significantly differ from HVs in their linguistic descriptions of social interactions. This may indicate preserved social interaction perception or may reflect task or sample limitations. Future studies should explore the influence of hypothalamic involvement and oxytocin in social functioning in AoC.