Inferring depression and its semantic underpinnings from simple lexical choices

Abstract

Spatial demonstratives are highly frequent linguistic universals, with at least two contrastive expressions (proximal ("this") vs. distal ("that")) indicating physical, emotional or functional proximity of the speaker to the referent. Re- cent evidence based on the Demonstrative Choice Task (DCT), in which participants couple words with a spatial demonstrative, indicates that demonstrative use, in absence of a communicative context, may also be indicative of experienced or emotional proximity to the self in an imagined mental space. As depression is characterized by increased and maladaptive focus on the self, the DCT may be a simple and reliable way to elicit behaviors that enable inference on the presence of severe depressive states, and allow descriptions of the semantic characteristics of altered self-representation in such states. Using a 300-item DCT, this paper presents two studies investigating the extent to which the DCT can be used to detect depression, and describe its semantic markers. In two independent samples, classification models were trained to classify individuals with high versus low depression symptom severity based on DCT responses. Results showed that lexical choices on the DCT reliably predict depression in both studies. Further, the DCT replicated semantic patterns of negative affect previously observed to be associated with depression. The paradigm may provide novel insights into the semantic characteristics underlying depressive states, and potentially individual differences hereof.