Social Cognition
Social Slips Stories Task
Also called: social blunder stories, social gaffe task, social slip detection task
Measure how people notice a social slip: after each short story, participants say whether someone said something awkward, who, and whether that person knew, with control stories in which no one did.
12 minUntimed
Free to start: 10 free participants per account, then $0.99 per participant for academic research, or any yearly plan. Try it here first, with no account.
- Papers, 2021 to 2025
- 110
- Evidence grade
- C
- Registered clinical studies
- 24
Ella baked cookies for the office. Marco takes one and says, “These are so dry. Someone forgot the butter.”
Ella baked cookies for the office. Marco takes one and says, “These are so dry. Someone forgot the butter.”
Did anyone say something awkward?What it measures
Measures how well people notice a social slip: someone saying something awkward without knowing why it is awkward. Participants read short stories, half with a slip and half without, and answer multiple-choice questions: did anyone say something awkward, who, and did that person know the fact that made it awkward. The main score is the percent of stories judged right. The stories are in English.
Constructs
- Theory of mind
- Social reasoning
- False belief reasoning
- Social cognition
Research uses
- Theory of mind research in adults
- Research on how people judge what others know
- Social cognition batteries
- Within-study group comparison
How the paradigm works
The Social Slips Stories Task measures how well people notice a social slip: someone saying something awkward without knowing the fact that makes it awkward. It follows the design of Stone, Baron-Cohen and Knight (1998) and Baron-Cohen and colleagues (1999), with our own name, stories and multiple-choice answers scored by rule. In half of the stories someone slips, such as a new roommate finding fault with a mug in front of the friend who made it. The other half are controls in which no one says anything awkward, though some hold a compliment, a plan or a gripe about something nobody present is connected to.
More about the paradigm
After each story the participant answers whether anyone said something awkward, something it would have been better not to say. After a yes come two more questions: who said it, chosen from the three people in the story, and whether a person knew the fact that matters. Every story ends with a question about a plain detail, with three choices, so the answers can show that the stories were read. The story stays on screen while the participant answers, and there is no time limit. A session has 20 stories by default, the number in the adult original, or 10 as a setting, half of each kind. The session's seed orders the stories, with no more than 3 of one kind in a row, and orders the names and choices, and all of it is saved. Two practice stories, one of each kind, have feedback. The stories were written for this test; no published story is used.
The main score is the percent of stories judged right: a slip story when the participant says someone said something awkward and names who, and a control story when the participant says no one did. Saying yes, or no, to every story scores 50%. The test also reports slips detected and noticed, controls correctly rejected, how often the participant said the speaker did not know, and detail accuracy. A session needs at least two thirds of the detail questions right and three quarters of its stories reached. In the published work, adults with damage to the orbitofrontal cortex (Stone, Baron-Cohen and Knight, 1998) and children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism (Baron-Cohen and colleagues, 1999) recognized slips less often than comparison groups; those findings are for the published stories, not these. The stories are English; sessions run in other languages are flagged for review. Scores support research and do not diagnose.
Scores
- Stories Judged Right%
- Percent of stories judged right: a slip story with a yes and the right speaker, a control story with a no.
- Higher is better
- Slips Detected%
- Percent of slip stories with a yes and the right speaker.
- Higher is better
- Slips Noticed%
- Percent of slip stories with a yes, whoever was named.
- Informational
- Controls Rejected%
- Percent of control stories with a no.
- Higher is better
- Speaker Did Not Know%
- Of the slip stories with a yes, the percent where the participant said the speaker did not know the fact that made the remark awkward.
- Higher is better
- Detail Accuracy%
- Percent of the detail questions answered right, in both kinds of story.
- Below two thirds invalidates
- Median Time to a Right Judgmentms
- Median time from the story's appearance to a right first answer, reading included.
- Informational
- Stories Shownitems
- Stories the session reached.
- Informational
- Stories Setitems
- Stories the session set out to show.
- Informational
- Anticipationscount
- Answers under 100 ms.
- Lower supports interpretation
Use and evidence
110 papers from 2021 to 2025 name this task in their title or abstract, up 9% compared with 2016 to 2020. That ranks it 203 of 495 test families in our census. See the counts for every test.
Show the numbers
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 26 |
| 2024 | 18 |
| 2023 | 26 |
| 2022 | 19 |
| 2021 | 21 |
| 2020 | 30 |
| 2019 | 18 |
| 2018 | 16 |
| 2017 | 18 |
| 2016 | 19 |
| 2015 | 17 |
| 2014 | 21 |
| 2013 | 19 |
| 2012 | 18 |
| 2011 | 11 |
| 2010 | 16 |
| 2009 | 6 |
| 2008 | 3 |
| 2007 | 5 |
| 2006 | 2 |
| 2005 | 1 |
| 2004 | 0 |
| 2003 | 0 |
| 2002 | 2 |
| 2001 | 0 |
| 2000 | 0 |
Use grade C
100 to 299 papers from 2021 to 2025.
Evidence grade C
At least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies.
- Papers on test-retest reliability
- 6
- Papers on reliability or validity
- 33
- Registered clinical studies using it as an outcome
- 24
How the grades work
Use: A is 1,000 or more papers from 2021 to 2025, B 300 to 999, C 100 to 299, D 30 to 99 and E fewer than 30. Evidence: A means at least 25 papers report its test-retest reliability and at least 25 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome; B, at least 8 test-retest papers, and either 5 registered clinical studies or 150 reliability or validity papers; C, at least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies; D, little published measurement evidence found. The counts measure use. They include every paper that names the task in its title or abstract. Grades describe the published research on this task, not ConductCognition's version of it.
Source: ConductCognition test census 0.22.0, counted 31 October 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
Task design
The trial sequence as the test runs in ConductCognition.
- Stories
- 20 by default, the number in the adult original, or 10 as a setting. Half hold a slip and half are controls in which no one says anything awkward. Each names three people.
- Questions
- After each story: did anyone say something awkward? After a yes: who said it, from the three people in the story, and did a person know the fact that matters. Then a detail question with 3 choices.
- Scoring
- A slip story is judged right with a yes and the right speaker, and a control story with a no. Saying yes, or no, to every story scores 50%.
- Time
- No time limit. The story stays on screen while the participant answers.
- Order
- The session's seed orders the stories, with no more than 3 of one kind in a row, and the names and detail choices, and all of it is saved.
- Practice
- 2 stories, one of each kind, with feedback. The test has no feedback.
The stories were written for this test; no published story is used, and the published test's norms and measurement figures do not apply to them. The stories are English; sessions run in other languages are flagged for review. Scores support research and do not diagnose.
Quality checks
Each session is marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason, before you see its scores.
Scored rows: the first answer to each story in social_slips_answer, yes or no, with half of the stories slips, so chance is 50%. Accuracy significantly below chance invalidates. The same answer on at least 90% of 12 or more stories is flagged for review and never invalidates. Answers under 200 ms on at least half of 4 or more answers invalidate. Fewer than two thirds of the detail questions right invalidates, and so does reaching fewer than 75% of the stories set. A session run in another language is flagged for review.
Why these rules
Accuracy significantly below chance (one-sided exact test, p < .05) cannot come from guessing; it means the response mapping was reversed or the task was not followed (Slick, Sherman and Iverson 1999 treat below-chance forced-choice performance as definite response bias). Chance-level accuracy can be a real result in impaired participants, so it is only flagged. Seeing a slip in every story, or in none, is a pattern this test can show, so the same answer throughout is flagged for review and never invalidates. An answer under 200 ms is faster than a simple visual reaction, so it cannot reflect the item. Following response-time effort screening for untimed tests (Wise and Kong 2005), the session is invalid only when at least half the answers are that fast. A detail question asks a plain fact of the story, with three choices, so a person who did not read the stories is right on about a third of them; below two thirds right, the answers do not show that the stories were read. With fewer than three quarters of the stories reached, the scores rest on too few stories to compare with a full session. The stories are English; a session in another language shows them to a participant who may not read English fluently, so it is flagged for review.
Running this test
Settings you can change
| Setting | Standard | Allowed |
|---|---|---|
| Stories | 20 stories (standard) | 10 stories, 20 stories (standard) |
Yearly plans can change settings within these limits. Free and pay-as-you-go studies use the standard settings.
Need a setting this test does not have?
Devices and languages
- Untimed test: runs on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. Participant devices
- Instructions and screens: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese. Words and sentences: English.
- Available on: Every plan, including the free plan.
- Recruiting online? See the setup guides for Prolific, Sona Systems, CloudResearch Connect and Qualtrics.
Cite and describe
Participants completed the Social Slips Stories Task in a web browser (ConductCognition task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0; Stone VE, Baron-Cohen S, Knight RT, 1998; Baron-Cohen S, O'Riordan M, Stone V, Jones R, Plaisted K, 1999), with the standard settings (stories: 20 stories). The main score was stories judged right (percent of stories judged right: a slip story with a yes and the right speaker, a control story with a no).
ConductCognition versions: task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0. Every export records the versions each session used, for a methods section.
- Stone, V. E., Baron-Cohen, S., & Knight, R. T. (1998). Frontal lobe contributions to theory of mind. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10(5), 640-656. https://doi.org/10.1162/089892998562942
- 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. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023035012436Control stories, in which no one says anything awkward.
Source papers
- Stone VE, Baron-Cohen S, Knight RT (1998). Frontal lobe contributions to theory of mind. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10(5):640-656.Paradigm source, Adults
Questions
How long does the Social Slips Stories Task take?
About 12 minutes, as listed in the test library.
What device does a participant need?
Untimed test: runs on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. The browser must be Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
What scores does it produce?
Stories Judged Right, Slips Detected, Slips Noticed, Controls Rejected, Speaker Did Not Know, Detail Accuracy, Median Time to a Right Judgment, Stories Shown, Stories Set and Anticipations. Each session is also marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason.
How widely is the Social Slips Stories Task used in research?
110 papers from 2021 to 2025 name it in their title or abstract, up 9% compared with 2016 to 2020. That ranks it 203 of 495 test families in the ConductCognition test census (use grade C). Source: ConductCognition test census 0.22.0, counted 31 October 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
How much reliability evidence does the Social Slips Stories Task have?
In the published research, 6 papers report its test-retest reliability and 24 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome (evidence grade C in the ConductCognition test census).
Which settings can a researcher change?
Stories (10 stories, 20 stories (standard)). Settings can be changed on yearly plans; free and pay-as-you-go studies use the standard settings.
Which languages can participants use?
The instructions and screens are in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese. The words and sentences stay in English, so sessions in other languages are flagged for review. English is on every plan, and the other languages come with yearly plans. Have a native speaker read the machine-translated text before launch.
Is this a clinical test?
No. ConductCognition is for research use only. It runs, scores and exports the test; clinical interpretation is outside the platform.
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