Psycholinguistic Markers of Autobiographical and Traumatic Memory

Zasiekina, Larysa; Kennison, Shelia M.; Zasiekin, Serhii; Khvorost, Khrystyna

doi:10.29038/eejpl.2019.6.2.zas

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…We expected that narratives would have psycholinguistic markers of a traumatic event. Zasiekina et al (2019) proposed psycholinguistic markers of traumatic memory, including the number of words in the narrative, the category of external agent, time, and place. In our study, we obtained relevant markers of pandemic narratives.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Restrictions in the COVID-19 Pandemic As a Traumatic Experience: Psycholinguistic Markers

Kostruba

2021

eejpl

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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of life including psychological well-being. Social restrictions, changes in habits, and permanent stay at home might have a negative impact on the psychological state of people. The purpose of our study is to conduct a psycholinguistic analysis of pandemic narratives to identify markers of traumatic experience and identify possible gender differences. The sample consisted of 167 respondents (72% females). The mean age of participants was 21.09 years (SD = 4.52). The study was conducted in Ukraine online in 2020, during the second wave of lockdown. The audience was asked to write a narrative on “How my life changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Personal experience”. As a result, we have found psycholinguistic markers that confirm the traumatic experience. Among them were the markers of time, depersonalization, and affective processes. A clear distinction of experience before and after the pandemic was detected in the narratives. This is characteristic of traumatic experience. In samples, such a distinction is made using the words “was” and “became”. The psychological marker of affective processes indicates immersion in a traumatic event. This discomposure is reflected in the manifestation of negative emotions through the words “bad”, “problems”, “critical”, and “difficult”. The main semantic markers in pandemic narratives are time and life. The life marker was meaningfully represented by stories about social limitations and physical health. Distinctions in pandemic descriptions of men and women have been revealed as psycholinguistic and semantic markers are different. Narratives of women are larger, they use more words (pronouns, adverbs and conjunctions, interrogatives and quantifiers) than men. Regarding content, men are more likely to talk about affective processes, while women − about social and biological ones. Our study is a maiden attempt to reflect on the pandemic as a traumatic event within the collective experience.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Restrictions in the COVID-19 Pandemic As a Traumatic Experience: Psycholinguistic Markers

Kostruba

2021

eejpl

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“…Linguistic accommodation helps to create good relations between participants. According to Zasiekina (2019), «positive emotional events satisfy the individual's needs and goals and refer to pleasant feelings» (p. 122).…”

Section: The Hasa Speech Communitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Dialect of Hasawis and Bedouins in Al-Ahsa (Saudi Arabia): A Comparative Study

Salman

Fridan

2021

Psycholing.

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Introduction. This paper is a sociolinguistic study that aims to investigate the speech of two groups in Al-Ahsa (Saudi Arabia) for the purpose of making a comparison between their speech. Methods. This study is empirical in its methods in that it is fully dependent on naturalistic speech. All the interviews, which were conducted in Al-Ahsa were conducted using the face-to-face technique for obtaining data with regard to linguistic variation. In this, the focus is on the Hasawi people and the Bedouins. Results. The study indicates that these two groups manipulate their dialect, in particular the key features of their dialects, to emphasize distinctiveness and negotiate identity. The study shows that while the linguistic behavior of the elderly in both groups is similar both within and outside of the group, the young generations show differences in their speech behavior. Additionally, group identity is very important to them. Outside the group, the possibility of interacting with members of the other group occurs, and, within this context, strong correlations appeared between linguistic factors and social factors, in particular the group identity among young males and gender distinctness among young females in both groups. Young males stereotypically tend to use the local linguistic forms, in particular the forms that are considered "the most salient feature which carries the social meaning of locality (Al-Wer, 1991: 75) and symbolizes local identities. The linguistic behavior of young males in both groups exhibits almost the same trends. Both are proud of the identity of the group to which they belong, particularly in gatherings in which other identities are present. Thus, unlike the two other age groups, the use of the /ts/ by the young Bedouin males and the use of the /EL/ by Hasawi young males increase in these settings rather than inside their own groups. This indicates that displaying one’s group identity is of significance to the young males in each group when a possible interaction takes place. While the use of the /EL/ among young Hasawis inside the group is 55.0%, its use was 70.0% in contexts outside the group and in the presence of other identities. The use of the /ts/ variant inside the group is 40%, while it is 60.0% outside the group. It also shows that the linguistic behavior of the Hisawi elderly is almost identical to the linguistic behavior of the elderly in the Bedouin group. In both groups, age (young, middle-aged or elderly) appears to be significant. Conclusion. The study shows that social competition is primarily expressed in the linguistic forms used. The more this social competition increases, the more unlikely the possibility of giving up one's social dialect becomes. People say much more through an accent than through the semantic content of the speech itself. To conclude, the study shows that social competition is frequently expressed in the linguistic forms used.

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“…This has been studied by means of the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text analysis programme (Francis & Pennebaker, 1992). This method has been used in a range of autobiographical narratives which include interviews, diary studies, life stories and word cue methods usually in non-clinical samples (Zasiekina, Kennison, Zasiekin, & Khvorost, 2019). For example, a comparison of trauma and positive experiences in the written narratives of 61 nonclinical respondents used LIWC to look at psycholinguistic markers for autobiographical memory (Zasiekina et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This method has been used in a range of autobiographical narratives which include interviews, diary studies, life stories and word cue methods usually in non-clinical samples (Zasiekina, Kennison, Zasiekin, & Khvorost, 2019). For example, a comparison of trauma and positive experiences in the written narratives of 61 nonclinical respondents used LIWC to look at psycholinguistic markers for autobiographical memory (Zasiekina et al, 2019). The presence of negative emotions and anxiety and the use of the pronoun 'they' as an external agent of proposition were higher in trauma memories as were categories of time and space.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Conversely, a lower word count and a focus on the present was more common in the trauma narratives. Given the participants were free from PTSD, the fact the narratives were not stuck in time or overestimating of the trauma, was taken as protective of PTSD (Zasiekina et al, 2019). The presence of social categories also pointed to an important positive impact of social support.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Childhood Trauma in Women and Fragmented Interview Narratives – Some Interdisciplinary Methodological and Clinical Implications

Bifulco¹

2021

eejpl

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Trauma experience is understood through its expression in language, with implications for psycholinguistic and clinical research and analysis. Clinical research approaches often approach childhood trauma through investigative, semi-structured, retrospective interviews (e.g. Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse, CECA). This facilitates the narration of abuse history for systematic analysis in relation to clinical disorder. Interview techniques assist such history-telling, for example by ‘scaffolding’ the account, aiding memory through chronological questioning, using a factual focus and using probing questions to collect detail and resolve inconsistencies. However, some personal narratives are fragmented, incomplete, contradictory or highly emotional/dissociated from emotion. This can be explained by trauma impacts such as being emotionally frozen (forgetting and avoidance) or overwhelmed (emotional over-remembering) and is termed ‘unresolved trauma’ with links to attachment vulnerability. These narratives can make investigative interview research more challenging but can offer opportunities for secondary psycholinguistic analysis. Illustrative interview quotes from CECA childhood physical and sexual abuse narratives of three women are provided with comment on style of reporting. The women had recurrent trauma experience and later life depression and anxiety. The interview responses are examined in terms of seven characteristics taken from available literature (e.g. incoherent, contradictory, lack recall, time lapses, emotionality, blame and vividness). The concept of unresolved loss is discussed and whether the linguistic characteristics are specific to a trauma or to an individual. Factual investigative interviews and psycholinguistic analysis of narrative may find ways of combining for greater depth of understanding of unresolved trauma, to extend available methods and aid therapy.

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Psycholinguistic Markers of Autobiographical and Traumatic Memory

Cited by 12 publications

References 28 publications

Social Restrictions in the COVID-19 Pandemic As a Traumatic Experience: Psycholinguistic Markers

Social Restrictions in the COVID-19 Pandemic As a Traumatic Experience: Psycholinguistic Markers

The Dialect of Hasawis and Bedouins in Al-Ahsa (Saudi Arabia): A Comparative Study

Childhood Trauma in Women and Fragmented Interview Narratives – Some Interdisciplinary Methodological and Clinical Implications

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