Clinical and computational speech measures are associated with social cognition in schizophrenia spectrum disorders

Tang, Sunny X.; Yan, Cong; Nikzad, Amir Hossein; Mehta, Aarush; Cho, Sunghye; Hänsel, Katrin; Berretta, Sarah; Dhar, Aamina A; Kane, John M.; Malhotra, Anil K.

doi:10.1016/j.schres.2022.06.012

Cited by 15 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Our findings support existing literature that links disorganized speech with a host of psychological factors, including social cognition [ 39 , 40 , 41 ], metacognitive processes [ 42 , 43 , 44 ], and traumatic experiences [ 45 , 46 ]. This suggests that disorganized speech is not meaningless content but that it may emerge in response to the multifaceted experiences within the lives of those with schizophrenia.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Narrative Forewarnings: A Qualitative Analysis of the Themes Preceding Disorganized Speech in Schizophrenia

Bettis,

Faith,

Beard

et al. 2024

Behavioral Sciences

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Disorganized speech is a critical barrier to recovery in schizophrenia, with profound negative impacts on one’s ability to engage with the world. Despite the limited efficacy of existing treatments in addressing disorganization, a qualitative analysis of what leads to disorganization in patient narratives has been lacking. This study addresses this gap through inductive thematic analysis of 30 narrative interviews with individuals with schizophrenia, matched based on whether Formal Thought Disorder (FTD) is present. Through this analysis, we identified four core themes (alienation, interpersonal tension, personal benchmarks, and adverse experiences) and eight subthemes. Our findings suggest that disorganization may serve as a protective mechanism against psychological distress and highlight how the severity of FTD influences these themes. Alienation, particularly due to illness-related stigma, emerged more prominently in those with FTD. The themes of personal benchmarks and interpersonal tension pointed towards a heightened sensitivity to social interactions and self-perception among those with schizophrenia. Adverse experiences, encompassing past challenges, suggest a potential link between trauma and symptom exacerbation. Our qualitative analysis of what themes precede disorganized speech has implications for tailoring psychotherapy. By considering an individual’s specific triggers and level of disorganization, therapy may be more effectively targeted to improve recovery-based outcomes. By identifying themes within patient narratives, this study advances our understanding of the qualitative aspects preceding disorganized speech in schizophrenia, paving the way for more personalized and effective recovery-focused interventions.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Narrative Forewarnings: A Qualitative Analysis of the Themes Preceding Disorganized Speech in Schizophrenia

Bettis,

Faith,

Beard

et al. 2024

Behavioral Sciences

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“…A new evidence regarding co-occurrence of de cit both in receptive nonverbal communication and expressive language showed that gesture-speech mismatch was captured worse in schizophrenia in the pragmatic level (Nagels et al, 2019). In addition, a novel technic veri ed the relation of nonverbal processing to speech disorder obtained by clinical rating, revealing that computational measure of speech did not alter the well-established correlation (Tang et al, 2022). Taken together, evidence displayed strong convergence on relations between verbal and nonverbal aspects of communication pose a challenge to interpretation of our result.…”

Section: Under Single Rubric Of Communication Disorder In Schsmentioning

confidence: 97%

The Impact of Verbal Communication Disturbance and Nonverbal Sensitivity on Social Functioning in Schizophrenia Patients

Demirok

Akça

Demirok

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Communication skills are vital to social functioning (SF). Patients with schizophrenia (SCH), a population with vital impairments in SF, are known to have difficulties in both verbal and nonverbal communication. To compare the influence of nonverbal sensitivity (NVS) and verbal communication disturbances (VCD) on SF, 38 SCH and 40 healthy controls (HC) were included in the present study. Mini Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity Test (Mini-PONS Test) and Communication Disturbance Index (CDI) were respectively used to assess nonverbal and verbal abilities. The level of SF was determined using Social Functioning Scale (SFS). The severity of illness was measured with Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANNS). Lower NVS and higher rate of VCD were found in SCH compared to HC. CDI and Mini-PONS total scores were significantly correlated with SFS total score in SCH, but not in HC. PANSS and Mini-PONS total scores remained a significant predictor of SFS total score in subsequent regression models in SCH. Symptom severity was shown to be a full mediator of the relationship between VCD and SF. The results indicate that the impairment of nonverbal communication skills have a salient impact on the decline in SF in schizophrenia.

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“…Sentiment analysis was deployed with the NRC-Canada Portuguese corpus (Mohammad et al, 2013). This technique summarizes the polarity of words based on a corpus of text that was previously labeled (Tang et al, 2022). In order to obtain overall valence, we took the average of all negative (valued as -1) and positive (+1) words in each text.…”

Section: Sentimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Burnishing the blueprint of speech assessment with natural language processing: methods to characterize subtle impairments on individuals in at-risk mental states from a large urban population.

Argôlo¹,

Ramos²,

Mota³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Spoken language is a key source of information for thought disorder evaluation. In the last decades, researchers linked psychopathology phenomena to their counterparts in natural language processing (NLP) analysis. Nonetheless, seemingly opposite traits remain unconciliated. For instance, psychotic speech comprises incoherent trails, but also highly associated ones. In order to address some of the remaining gaps, we leveraged procedures from dynamical systems and graph theory. We examined transcribed interviews of 133 individuals — 60 in at-risk mental states (ARMS) and 73 healthy controls — screened from 4,500 quota-sampled citizens in a large metropolis. SIPS was used to assess psychotic symptoms. NLP features were correlated with psychotic traits (Spearman’s ρ) and ARMS status (Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, general linear models and ensemble machine learning algorithms). The general trait (ω), negative, disorganized and general symptoms were correlated with snippets made of consecutive similar words. Namely, their frequency, average/maximum size, heterogeneity and the average number of unrelated words between such snippets. Positive symptoms were associated with adjective use. Average graph centrality was inversely correlated with the general trait. NLP features presented good performance as input in machine learning classification using the AdaBoost model with Random Forests as base learner (F1 score: 0.83, AUC: 0.93, Balanced Accuracy: 0.86).The existence of loosely connected words (e.g. incoherence, looseness, derailment) is well studied. Conversely, NLP models of perseveration (e.g. higher likelihood of chaining together islands of closely related words) and circumstantiality are brought forth in this work. Evidence shows good performance of NLP for clinical decision support in ARMS screening and assessment of subclinical psychosis. We show that a blueprint for speech-based psychometric evaluation is only a few pieces away. We highlight these fields for future research: clanging (a low hanging fruit), environmental context, task-related differences and interpersonal interactions.

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Clinical and computational speech measures are associated with social cognition in schizophrenia spectrum disorders

Cited by 15 publications

References 51 publications

Narrative Forewarnings: A Qualitative Analysis of the Themes Preceding Disorganized Speech in Schizophrenia

Narrative Forewarnings: A Qualitative Analysis of the Themes Preceding Disorganized Speech in Schizophrenia

The Impact of Verbal Communication Disturbance and Nonverbal Sensitivity on Social Functioning in Schizophrenia Patients

Burnishing the blueprint of speech assessment with natural language processing: methods to characterize subtle impairments on individuals in at-risk mental states from a large urban population.

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