Language as Sensor in Human‐Centered Computing: Clinical Contexts as Use Cases

Abstract

Recognizing the increased emphasis on adaptive and personalized computing, as well as the popularity of multimodal natural language and speech processing in human-centered applications, this paper articulates and discusses the role of natural language as a rich and meaningful sensor of the human body and mind. As the primary means of human interaction, information sharing, and social, emotional, and interpersonal grounding, linguistic sensing provides a particularly useful and rich sensory window for understanding the dynamically and temporally unfolding state of the human body and mind for non-linguistic aims. For sensory monitoring, linguistic data are unobtrusive, inexpensive, pervasive, natural, especially insightful from the perspective of cognitive processing, and generally convenient to capture, in contrast to many other sensor modalities that require excessive wearable equipment or smart clothing. Using clinical computational linguistics as a springboard for discussing and exemplifying this unconventional yet increasingly prevalent view of language, including its role in practical and serviceable linguistic analysis, this overview surveys recent work in computational linguistics that broadly takes advantage of linguistic sensing's potential. The discussion also outlines existing challenges and considerations for continued research in this area, from the perspective of natural language as a sensor in human-centered computing and the development of innovative and applied language technologies.