The following is a summary of “Emotional tone in clinical high risk for psychosis: novel insights from a natural language analysis approach,” published in the May 2024 issue of Psychiatry by Olson et al.
People at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis often experience emotional issues that are hard to detect. Natural language processing (NLP) might offer new ways to understand these symptoms.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study predicting that high-risk individuals would show more negative emotions and use less emotional language than controls and how this relates to their symptoms.
They included 49 high-risk individuals and 42 healthy controls, all completing a semi-structured interview. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) were used to analyze the transcripts’ emotional tone and count positive/negative words used during the interview. Participants also completed clinical assessments to confirm CHR status and characterize symptoms.
The results showed that the CHR group showed more negative emotional tone than healthy controls (t=2.676, P=0.009), which was linked to more severe positive symptoms (r2=0.323, P=0.013). However, the percentages of positive and negative words were similar between the groups (P’s>0.05).
Investigators concluded that language analysis using NLP offers valuable insights into emotional issues and psychosis risk, revealing subtle language patterns in individuals with CHR beyond word choice.
Source: frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1389597/full
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