Changes in self and object representations following psychotherapy measured by a theory-free, computational, semantic space method

Abstract

We propose a theory-neutral, computational and data-driven method for assessing changes in semantic content of object representations following long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy. Young adults in psychotherapy are compared with an age-matched, non-clinical sample at three time points. Verbatim transcripts of descriptions of the self and parents were quantified in a semantic space constructed by Latent Semantic Analysis. In the psychotherapy group, all representations changed from baseline to follow-up, whereas no comparable changes could be observed in the comparison group. The semantic space method supports the hypothesis that long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy contributes to sustained change of affective-cognitive schemas of self and others.

Quantifying Semantic Linguistic Maturity in Children

“….03, which we interpret as indicative of a good quality space, see for example (Arvidsson et al, 2011).…”

“…Our research group has developed methods for the creation of semantic spaces and applied them in different contexts. For details of these methods see for example (Andersson, Bååth, & Sikström, 2012;Arvidsson et al, 2011;Garcia & Sikström, 2012;Garcia & Sikström, 2014;Gustafsson, Sikström, & Lindholm, in press;Karlsson et al, 2013;Kjell, Nima, Sikström, Archer, & Garcia, 2013;Marklund, Sikström, Bååth, & Nilsson, 2009;Roll et al, 2011;Rosenberg, Sikström, & Garcia, 2013;Sarwar, Sikström, Allwood, & Kerr-Innes, in press;Willander & Sikström, in press). Here we summarize some of the main properties of semantic space methods, and for methodological details we refer the interested reader to references above.…”

“…have little or no similarity. We further propose that semantic spaces (Arvidsson et al, 2011;Karlsson, Sikström, & Willander, 2013;Landauer & Dumais, 1997;Sahlgren, 2007) can be used to analyse the children's semantic representation of narratives as their linguistic skills mature. Based on information 5 of the co-occurrence of words in large text corpora, the semantic representation of words can be quantified.…”

“…This allows a 4 quantificational approach, as opposed to, for example, the componential and procedural approaches (Clark & Clark, 1977). In a number of publications methods for measuring semantic representations in adults have been developed (Arvidsson, Werbart, & Sikström, 2011;Gustafsson, Lindholm, & Sikström, in press;Roll et al, 2011), where these representations can be generated by looking at the co-occurrence of words. These high dimensional representations measure similarities between words, so that words with similar meaning have similar representations (Sahlgren, 2008).…”

Agentic, communal, and spiritual traits are related to the semantic representation of written narratives of positive and negative life events

“…The basic idea is that co-occurrences of words produce information about the semantic meaning of the words/narrative. The quantification of the adolescents' narratives allowed us to use standard statistical tests to investigate if self-reported psychometric measures of personality are significantly related to the semantic representation of the written narratives of positive and negative life events (for a detailed description of using and applying semantic analysis see Arvidsson et al 2011;Sikström 2013, 2014;Garcia et al 2015;Rosenberg et al 2013). As suggested by macro-level of analysis showing that narratives comprise agentic and communal themes, we expected that the semantic representation of the written memories of life events would be significantly related to agentic (i.e., selfdirectedness) and communal (i.e., cooperativeness) traits.…”