Emotion Recognition Test (RMIF)

The Reading the Mind in Films task (RMIF) was developed by Ofer Golan, Simon Baron-Cohen, and colleagues at the University of Cambridge’s Autism Research Centre and published in the journal Social Neuroscience in 2006. The task was created to address a gap in how social cognition was measured: most established instruments of the time, such as the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test, asked respondents to judge mental states from static photographs. Everyday social understanding rarely works that way. Real interactions unfold over time and carry information in several channels at once — facial expression, tone of voice, posture, and the surrounding social situation.

To capture this richer form of social perception, the authors assembled 22 short scenes taken from feature films. Each scene depicts a social interaction, and the viewer is asked how a specified character is feeling at the end of the scene. Four answer words accompany every scene: the correct answer and three foils selected to be plausible within the same scene. The task therefore cannot be solved by simple elimination; it requires integrating what is seen and heard into a judgment about another person’s state of mind.

The RMIF is a performance test rather than a questionnaire. Instead of asking you to describe yourself, it measures what you actually do: your score is the number of scenes, out of 22, for which you chose the answer keyed as correct by the task’s authors. The emotions involved are largely complex mental states — words such as smug, exasperated, disconcerted, or resigned — which are harder to recognize than basic emotions like happiness or fear and depend far more heavily on context.

In the original study, the task was administered to adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism and to matched general-population controls. The control group recognized on average 18.77 of the 22 scenes correctly (standard deviation 2.41), while the group on the autism spectrum averaged 14.96 (standard deviation 3.28) — a significant difference. The authors concluded that adults on the spectrum can have specific difficulties recognizing complex emotions and mental states when these must be integrated from multiple channels in real time, even when language and intelligence are intact. A child version of the task was published in 2008, and film-based measures of this kind have since been used in research on social cognition more broadly.

This test presents the original 22 scenes and answer words and scores your responses against the published key. Your result is reported as a total score from 0 to 22 and placed alongside the averages reported by the task’s authors. Scores of 16 and above fall within the range the authors observed in their general-population control group; scores below 16 fall under it. These reference points come from the original study’s sample, which was modest in size, and should be read as orientation rather than as validated population norms.

As the publishers of this free online emotion recognition test, we have strived to make it as reliable and faithful to the published task as possible. However, free online tests such as this one deliver information for educational and entertainment purposes only; they cannot provide professional assessments or recommendations of any kind. A low score on this test does not mean that you are on the autism spectrum, and a high score does not rule anything out. If you have concerns about social communication or any related matter, please consult a qualified professional. This test is not affiliated with or endorsed by the task’s authors or the University of Cambridge.

References

• Golan, O., Baron-Cohen, S., Hill, J. J., & Golan, Y. (2006). The ‘Reading the Mind in Films’ task: Complex emotion recognition in adults with and without autism spectrum conditions. Social Neuroscience, 1(2), 111-123.
• Golan, O., Baron-Cohen, S., & Golan, Y. (2008). The ‘Reading the Mind in Films’ task [child version]: Complex emotion and mental state recognition in children with and without autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 38(8), 1534-1541.
• Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Hill, J., Raste, Y., & Plumb, I. (2001). The ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ test revised version: A study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42(2), 241-251.
• Baksh, R. A., Abrahams, S., Auyeung, B., & MacPherson, S. E. (2018). The Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT): Examining the effects of age on a new measure of theory of mind and social norm understanding. PLOS ONE, 13(4), e0195818.