Linguistic style as a digital marker for depression severity: An ambulatory assessment pilot study in patients with depressive disorder undergoing sleep deprivation therapy.

BACKGROUND: Digital phenotyping and monitoring tools are the most promising approaches to automatically detect upcoming depressive episodes. Especially, linguistic style has been seen as a potential behavioral marker of depression, as cross-sectional studies showed, for example, less frequent use of positive emotion words, intensified use of negative emotion words, and more self-references in patients with depression compared to healthy controls. However, longitudinal studies are sparse and therefore it remains unclear whether within-person fluctuations in depression severity are associated with individuals' linguistic style. METHODS: To capture affective states and concomitant speech samples longitudinally, we used an ambulatory assessment approach sampling multiple times a day via smartphones in patients diagnosed with depressive disorder undergoing sleep deprivation therapy. This intervention promises a rapid change of affective symptoms within a short period of time, assuring sufficient variability in depressive symptoms. We extracted word categories from the transcribed speech samples using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. RESULTS: Our analyses revealed that more pleasant affective momentary states (lower reported depression severity, lower negative affective state, higher positive affective state, (positive) valence, energetic arousal and calmness) are mirrored in the use of less negative emotion words and more positive emotion words. CONCLUSION: We conclude that a patient's linguistic style, especially the use of positive and negative emotion words, is associated with self-reported affective states and thus is a promising feature for speech-based automated monitoring and prediction of upcoming episodes, ultimately leading to better patient care.

Language left behind on social media exposes the emotional and cognitive costs of a romantic breakup.

Using archived social media data, the language signatures of people going through breakups were mapped. Text analyses were conducted on 1,027,541 posts from 6,803 Reddit users who had posted about their breakups. The posts include users' Reddit history in the 2 y surrounding their breakups across the various domains of their life, not just posts pertaining to their relationship. Language markers of an impending breakup were evident 3 mo before the event, peaking on the week of the breakup and returning to baseline 6 mo later. Signs included an increase in I-words, we-words, and cognitive processing words (characteristic of depression, collective focus, and the meaning-making process, respectively) and drops in analytic thinking (indicating more personal and informal language). The patterns held even when people were posting to groups unrelated to breakups and other relationship topics. People who posted about their breakup for longer time periods were less well-adjusted a year after their breakup compared to short-term posters. The language patterns seen for breakups replicated for users going through divorce (n = 5,144; 1,109,867 posts) or other types of upheavals (n = 51,357; 11,081,882 posts). The cognitive underpinnings of emotional upheavals are discussed using language as a lens.

Storytelling increases oxytocin and positive emotions and decreases cortisol and pain in hospitalized children.

Storytelling is a distinctive human characteristic that may have played a fundamental role in humans' ability to bond and navigate challenging social settings throughout our evolution. However, the potential impact of storytelling on regulating physiological and psychological functions has received little attention. We investigated whether listening to narratives from a storyteller can provide beneficial effects for children admitted to intensive care units. Biomarkers (oxytocin and cortisol), pain scores, and psycholinguistic associations were collected immediately before and after storytelling and an active control intervention (solving riddles that also involved social interaction but lacked the immersive narrative aspect). Compared with the control group, children in the storytelling group showed a marked increase in oxytocin combined with a decrease in cortisol in saliva after the 30-min intervention. They also reported less pain and used more positive lexical markers when describing their time in hospital. Our findings provide a psychophysiological basis for the short-term benefits of storytelling and suggest that a simple and inexpensive intervention may help alleviate the physical and psychological pain of hospitalized children on the day of the intervention.

How ready is speech-to-text for psychological language research? Evaluating the validity of AI-generated English transcripts for analyzing free-spoken responses in younger and older adults.

For the longest time, the gold standard in preparing spoken language corpora for text analysis in psychology was using human transcription. However, such standard comes at extensive cost, and creates barriers to quantitative spoken language analysis that recent advances in speech-to-text technology could address. The current study quantifies the accuracy of AI-generated transcripts compared to human-corrected transcripts across younger (n = 100) and older (n = 92) adults and two spoken language tasks. Further, it evaluates the validity of Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC)-features extracted from these two kinds of transcripts, as well as transcripts specifically prepared for LIWC analyses via tagging. We find that overall, AI-generated transcripts are highly accurate with a word error rate of 2.50% to 3.36%, albeit being slightly less accurate for younger compared to older adults. LIWC features extracted from either transcripts are highly correlated, while the tagging procedure significantly alters filler word categories. Based on these results, automatic speech-to-text appears to be ready for psychological language research when using spoken language tasks in relatively quiet environments, unless filler words are of interest to researchers.

Can generative AI infer thinking style from language? Evaluating the utility of AI as a psychological text analysis tool.

Generative AI, short for Generative Artificial Intelligence, a class of artificial intelligence systems, is not currently the choice technology for text analysis, but prior work suggests it may have some utility to assess dynamics like emotion. The current work builds upon this empirical foundation to consider how analytic thinking scores from a large language model chatbot, ChatGPT, were linked to analytic thinking scores from dictionary-based tools like Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). Using over 16,000 texts from four samples and tested against three prompts and two large language models (GPT-3.5, GPT-4), the evidence suggests there were small associations between ChatGPT and LIWC analytic thinking scores (meta-analytic effect sizes: .058 < rs < .304; ps < .001). When given the formula to calculate the LIWC analytic thinking index, ChatGPT performed incorrect mathematical operations in 22% of the cases, suggesting basic word and number processing may be unreliable with large language models. Researchers should be cautious when using AI for text analysis.

Examining the relationship between parents' self-reported mindfulness and observed language use in attachment-relevant communication.

Parents' language use is an important context for early socialization. We examined the relationship between parents' self-reported mindfulness and observed language use in two forms of attachment-relevant communication. Sixty-three parents of 6-18-month-old infants from Australia (n = 32) and New Zealand (n = 31) completed the five facets of mindfulness-short form (FFMQ-SF) questionnaire, the adult attachment interview (AAI), and a 10-min play session with their infant. We examined parents' frequency of word usage within the categories of the linguistic inquiry word count (LIWC) text analysis program to explore the relationship between mindfulness and language use. Mindfulness was associated with cognitive, affective, perceptual, and time orientation language use in the AAI. However, fewer associations were identified between mindfulness and language use in the parent-infant play session. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to mindfulness and attachment.

El uso del lenguaje por parte de los padres es un contexto importante para la temprana socialización. Examinamos la relación entre la auto reportada atención consciente de los padres y el observado uso del lenguaje en dos formas de comunicación relevantes a la unión afectiva. Sesenta y tres progenitores de infantes entre 6 y 18 meses de edad de Australia (n = 32) y Nueva Zelanda (n = 31) completaron el cuestionario de Cinco Facetas de la Atención Consciente en su formato corto (FFMQ­SF), la Entrevista de la Afectividad Adulta (AAI), así como una sesión de juego de diez minutos con sus infantes. Examinamos la frecuencia del uso de palabras por parte de los padres dentro de las categorías del programa de análisis de texto Investigación Lingüística del Conteo de Palabras (LIWC) para explorar la relación entre la atención consciente y el uso del lenguaje. Se asoció la atención consciente con el uso del lenguaje cognitivo, afectivo, perceptivo y con orientación del tiempo de la AAI. Sin embargo, menos asociaciones se identificaron entre la atención consciente y el uso del lenguaje en la sesión de juego entre progenitor e infante. Los resultados se discuten en términos de su relevancia para la atención consciente y la afectividad.

Linguistic predictors of symptom change in an internet-based cognitive behavioural intervention for prolonged grief symptoms.

This study investigates linguistic predictors of reduction in prolonged grief symptoms following a writing intervention in an internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy for people bereaved by cancer. Data stem from a randomized control clinical trial with 70 people. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program was used to analyse patient language. Absolute change scores and reliable change index were used to calculate reduction in grief symptoms and clinical significant change. Best subset regression and Mann-Whitney U tests were conducted. A higher reduction of prolonged grief symptoms was correlated with more social words in the first module (ß = -.22, p = .042), less risk (ß = .33, p = .002) and body words (ß = .22, p = .048) in the second module and more time words in the third module (ß = -.26, p = .018). Patients with clinically significant change showed a higher median in function words in the first module (p = .019), a lower median in risk words in the second module (p = .019) and a higher median in assent words in the last module (p = .014) compared to patients without clinically significant change. Findings suggest that it may be beneficial for therapists to encourage a more detailed description of patients' relationship with their deceased relative during the first module, a change in perspective during the second module and a summary of past, present and future aspects at the end of therapy. Future studies should include mediation analyses to allow causal attribution of the studied effects.

Do Men Apply Differently Than Women? An Analysis of Language in Standardized Application Documents.

Based on previous research about gender differences we investigated whether varying language utilization across gender can be found in standardized text documents such as job applications. To this end, 581 cover letters, CVs and complete application documents were analyzed using linguistic inquiry and word count. Some language differences between men and women could be shown, even if as expected, there were smaller effects than in comparative studies in less formalized contexts. These differences were specific for cover letters and CVs. A differentiated examination showed that gender differences in the cover letters were largely determined by function words. In contrast, differences in the CVs were mainly due to differences in content words. The findings add the context of recruiting to lend support to the framework of gender differences in language across different contexts. Implications for candidates, recruiters and companies are discussed.

Linguistic markers of processing the first months of the pandemic COVID-19: a psycholinguistic analysis of Italian university students' diaries.

A longitudinal psycholinguistic study was conducted with 107 students from different Italian universities that produced daily photo-diary entries for two weeks, one at the beginning and the other at the end of the first Italian lockdown period, imposed in view of the rapid dissemination of COVID -19. The task was to take a daily photo accompanied by a short description (text). The texts accompanying the photos were analysed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software to analyze linguistic markers representing psychological processes related to the experience of the pandemic and the lockdown, identifying potential changes in psycholinguistic variables useful for understanding the psychological impact of such harsh and extended restricted living conditions on Italian students. LIWC categories related to negation, anger, cognitive mechanisms, tentative discourse, past, and future increased statistically significantly between the two time points, while word count, prepositions, communication, leisure, and home decreased statistically significantly. While male participants used more articles at both time points, females used more words related to anxiety, social processes, past, and present at T1 and more related to insight at T2. Participants who lived with their partner showed higher scores on negative emotions, affect, positive feelings, anger, optimism, and certainty. Participants from southern Italy tended to describe their experiences from a collective and social perspective rather than an individual perspective. By identifying, discussing, and comparing these phenomena with the broader literature, a spotlight is shed for the first time on the psycholinguistic analysis of students at the national level who faced the first COVID -19 lockdown in Italy.

Linguistic and Personological Features of the Doka and Martin Grieving Style Continuum.

While there is extensive research on the adaptive grief styles developed by Doka and Martin, this study is the first of its kind to explore the language used among each style of grief. This study used clinical vignettes from a variety of sources on instrumental and intuitive grieving in an attempt to decipher the language use across various linguistic and psychological processes. Following this analysis, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) was used fitting a two-topic model to analyze differences between topics while additionally performing a supervised LDA analysis. The strongest data from this study relate to intuitive grief, which found a higher use of present-tense language in comparison to the instrumental grief style. In addition, results found that the language used by intuitive grievers is slightly more distinguishable than that of its instrumental counterpart. Several implications for counseling and research were developed in response to these findings.

A Personal Model of Trumpery: Linguistic Deception Detection in a Real-World High-Stakes Setting.

Language use differs between truthful and deceptive statements, but not all differences are consistent across people and contexts, complicating the identification of deceit in individuals. By relying on fact-checked tweets, we showed in three studies (Study 1: 469 tweets; Study 2: 484 tweets; Study 3: 24 models) how well personalized linguistic deception detection performs by developing the first deception model tailored to an individual: the 45th U.S. president. First, we found substantial linguistic differences between factually correct and factually incorrect tweets. We developed a quantitative model and achieved 73% overall accuracy. Second, we tested out-of-sample prediction and achieved 74% overall accuracy. Third, we compared our personalized model with linguistic models previously reported in the literature. Our model outperformed existing models by 5 percentage points, demonstrating the added value of personalized linguistic analysis in real-world settings. Our results indicate that factually incorrect tweets by the U.S. president are not random mistakes of the sender.

Conclusiveness, linguistic characteristics and readability of Cochrane plain language summaries of intervention reviews: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: One of the most important formats to disseminate the evidence in health to different populations are Cochrane Plain Language Summaries (PLSs). PLSs should be written in a simplified language, easily understandable and providing clear message for the consumer. The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which PLSs are customized for lay persons, specifically by providing conclusive, comprehensible, and readable messages. METHODS: The study analyzed Cochrane PLSs of interventional studies (N = 4360) in the English language published from 1995 to 2019. We categorized the conclusiveness into one of the following categories: "positive", "positive inconclusive", "no evidence", "no opinion", "negative", "negative inconclusive", "unclear", "equal", "equal inconclusive". Language characteristics were analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software. The level of readability was measured by SMOG (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook) index, indicating the number of years of education required to read the text. For each PLS, we also collected the following data: Cochrane Review Network, year of publication and number of authors. RESULTS: Most of the PLSs (80%) did not have a conclusive message. In 53% PLSs there was no concluding opinion about the studied intervention or the conclusion was unclear. The most frequent conclusiveness category was "no opinion" (30%), and its frequency increased over time. The conclusiveness categories were similarly dispersed across Cochrane Networks. PLSs were written in an objective style, with high levels of analytical tone and clout above neutral, but a lower relation to authenticity and tone. The median number of years of non-specific education needed to read the PLSs was 14.9 (IQR 13.8 to 16.1), indicating that the person needs almost 15 years of general education to read the content with ease. CONCLUSION: Most of the Cochrane PLSs provided no concluding opinion or unclear conclusion regarding the effects of analyzed intervention. Analysis of readability indicated that they may be difficult to read for the lay population without medical education. Our results indicate that PLSs may not be so plain, and that the writing of Cochrane PLSs requires more effort. Tools used in this study could improve PLSs and make them better suited for lay audiences.

The Implicit Achievement Motive in the Writing Style.

Linguistic theories and research indicate that unconscious processes should influence the content, but moreover also the way how things are expressed. As the first is well researched and the second is almost neglected, I want to assess how the writing style of a person is related to the implicit achievement motive and its two components hope of success (HS) and fear of failure (FF). Therefore, thematic apperception test/picture story exercise responses of 2942 persons were analyzed regarding the three writing style features (1) syntax, (2) nominal/verbal writing, and (3) function words. According to the assumptions, the results of two independent measures (Stanford Parser and LIWC) show that a verbal fluent writing style with simple syntax is associated with HS, whereby FF-motivated people show nominal writing with interjections, conjunctions, and complex punctuations.

Gain-loss framing and patients' decisions: a linguistic examination of information framing in physician-patient conversations.

When discussing risks and benefits with cancer patients, physicians could focus on losses such as mortality rates and cancer recurrence or, alternatively, gains such as survival rates and curing cancer. Previous research has shown that the way health information is framed influences individuals' preferences and choices. We operationalized gain-loss framing as physicians' choice of words related to gains (cancer survival), or losses (cancer mortality). In an exploratory analysis, we investigated (a) whether physicians used gain or loss words as a function of their recommendation, (b) whether physicians' choice of words was associated with patients' treatment choices. We analyzed transcribed consultations with male patients who had intermediate-risk prostate cancer. Using an iterative process of gathering and evaluating words, we created gain- and loss-dictionaries. The loss-dictionary included words related to cancer death and cancer progression. The gain-dictionary included words related to survival and cure. Using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software, we calculated the number of words related to gains and losses in each transcript. We found that physicians who recommended immediate cancer treatment for prostate cancer (vs. active surveillance) used slightly fewer words related to losses and significantly fewer words related specifically to death from cancer. Further analysis showed that loss words were associated with the patient's choice of immediate cancer treatment. A novel method of automated text analysis showed that physicians' use of loss words was correlated with physicians' recommendations for cancer treatment versus active surveillance. Additionally, loss words in consultations were associated with patients' choice of cancer treatment.

Changes in Language Style and Topics in an Online Eating Disorder Community at the Beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Observational Study.

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 has affected individuals with lived experience of eating disorders (EDs), with many reporting higher psychological distress, higher prevalence of ED symptoms, and compensatory behaviors. The COVID-19 pandemic and the health and safety measures taken to contain its spread also disrupted routines and reduced access to familiar coping mechanisms, social support networks, and health care services. Social media and the ED communities on social media platforms have been an important source of support for individuals with EDs in the past. So far, it is unknown how discussions in online ED communities changed as offline support networks were disrupted and people spent more time at home in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to identify changes in language content and style in an online ED community during the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: We extracted posts and their comments from the ED community on the social media website Reddit and concatenated them to comment threads. To analyze these threads, we applied top-down and bottom-up language analysis methods based on topic modeling with latent Dirichlet allocation and 13 indicators from the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program, respectively. Threads were split into prepandemic (before March 11, 2020) and midpandemic (after March 11, 2020) groups. Standardized mean differences were calculated to estimate change between pre- and midpandemic threads. RESULTS: A total of 17,715 threads (n=8772, 49.5% prepandemic threads; n=8943, 50.5% midpandemic threads) were extracted from the ED community and analyzed. The final topic model contained 21 topics. CIs excluding zero were found for standardized mean differences of 15 topics and 9 Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count categories covering themes such as ED symptoms, mental health, treatment for EDs, cognitive processing, social life, and emotions. CONCLUSIONS: Although we observed a reduction in discussions about ED symptoms, an increase in mental health and treatment-related topics was observed at the same time. This points to a change in the focus of the ED community from promoting potentially harmful weight loss methods to bringing attention to mental health and treatments for EDs. These results together with heightened cognitive processing, increased social references, and reduced inhibition of negative emotions detected in discussions indicate a shift in the ED community toward a pro-recovery orientation.

The Grievance Dictionary: Understanding threatening language use.

This paper introduces the Grievance Dictionary, a psycholinguistic dictionary that can be used to automatically understand language use in the context of grievance-fueled violence threat assessment. We describe the development of the dictionary, which was informed by suggestions from experienced threat assessment practitioners. These suggestions and subsequent human and computational word list generation resulted in a dictionary of 20,502 words annotated by 2318 participants. The dictionary was validated by applying it to texts written by violent and non-violent individuals, showing strong evidence for a difference between populations in several dictionary categories. Further classification tasks showed promising performance, but future improvements are still needed. Finally, we provide instructions and suggestions for the use of the Grievance Dictionary by security professionals and (violence) researchers.

How Do Arab Tweeters Perceive the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Language reflects several cognitive variables that are grounded in cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. This paper examines how Arab populations reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter over twelve weeks since the outbreak. We conducted a lexicon-based thematic analysis using corpus tools, and LIWC and applied R language's stylo. The dominant themes that were closely related to coronavirus tweets included the outbreak of the pandemic, metaphysics responses, signs and symptoms in confirmed cases, and conspiracism. The psycholinguistic analysis also showed that tweeters maintained high levels of affective talk, which was loaded with negative emotions and sadness. Also, LIWC's psychological categories of religion and health dominated the Arabic tweets discussing the pandemic situation. In addition, the contaminated counties that captured most of the attention of Arabic tweeters were China, the USA, Italy, Germany, India, and Japan. At the same time, China and the USA were instrumental in evoking conspiracist ideation about spreading COVID-19 to the world.

A case analysis of service-member trauma processing related to art therapy within a military-intensive outpatient program.

OBJECTIVES: Art therapy has been widely used in clinical settings and has shown preliminary success in military trauma. This case study describes a mask-making art therapy directive facilitated by a board-certified art therapist as an adjunct to group posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment in a military-intensive outpatient program. METHODS: Described are clinical outcome measures, linguistic analysis of a personal journal, evaluation of this service-member's artwork, and experiences in the program. RESULTS: Mask-making, as a trauma-focused group-art therapy directive, expanded the understanding of treatment progress reflected in journal notes, mask imagery, and by a change in linguistic indices of trauma processing, despite an overall increase in PTSD symptoms as he confronted his traumatic experiences. He reported improvement in coping and successfully returned to full military duty following treatment. CONCLUSIONS: This case study suggests that art therapy and written narrative, combined with standardized self-report assessments, may more accurately indicate improvement in overall PTSD treatment.

Ambulatory assessment of language use: Evidence on the temporal stability of Electronically Activated Recorder and stream of consciousness data.

The ambulatory assessment offers a wide range of methods enabling researchers to investigate psychological, behavioral, emotional, and biological processes. These methods enable us to gather data on individual differences in language use for psychological research. Two studies were conducted with an aim to evaluate and compare the temporal stability of language measures extracted by LIWC software form data obtained by two frequently used methods for assessment of language use, i.e., Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) and stream of consciousness (SOC) task. Additionally, we examined the amount of variance in language use (assessed by both methods) that can be attributed to intra-individual variability and stable individual differences. Study 1 was focused on investigating language use obtained from 74 respondents using the EAR for 3 consecutive days. Study 2 was conducted on 250 respondents participating in a SOC task where verbal production was collected at ten time points over a 2-month period. Results show that measures obtained using the SOC task have higher temporal stability and consistency, and to a certain extent enable better detection of individual differences. Taking into account certain situational variations improves the reliability of EAR measures.

Too (Psychologically) Close for Comfort? Comparing Verbal Immediacy among Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs) and Non-ACOAs.

BACKGROUND: Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs) have shown poorer psychosocial outcomes compared to their counterparts (non-ACOAs). These poorer outcomes, however, are not consistently present between groups. Investigating psychological markers of such functioning can help to highlight nuances between ACOAs and non-ACOAs even when mean differences of psychosocial outcomes are not present. This is pertinent to the study of ACOAs to understand predictors of positive well-being trajectories. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study was to compare the linguistic content of ACOAs and non-ACOAs in relation to psychological functioning. METHOD: A quasi-experimental design was employed; ACOAs (n = 53) and non-ACOAs (n = 80) were asked to write a significant memory in which they went through a change of some kind (i.e., turning point) regarding a parent. Participants were then asked to complete measures of psychological functioning. Using a word counting software, we identified verbal immediacy, a combination of words signifying psychological closeness, within participants' memories. RESULTS: Results indicated no mean differences in the amount of verbal immediacy amid ACOAs and non-ACOAs, but there were differences in its predictive ability between groups. Among ACOAs, verbal immediacy predicted better psychological functioning. Yet, there was no association found among non-ACOAs. Conclusions/Importance: These results show that psychological closeness, among ACOAs, is indicative of better psychological functioning, even though it is typically associated with worse outcomes. This suggests that vulnerable individuals may have nontraditional correlates between psychological markers, like verbal immediacy, and such functioning and should be assessed when comparing these populations.