Linguistic styles: language use as an individual difference

Predicting Recidivism Among Internet Child Sex Sting Offenders Using Psychological Language Analysis

In this study, we examined the extent to which computerized linguistic analysis of natural language data from chat transcripts of Internet child sex stings predicted recidivism among 334 convicted offenders. Using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program, we found that reoffenders (including simultaneous and previous offenders) differed significantly from nonreoffenders in measures of clout (a composite measure of social dominance) and percentage of words used in the following linguistic categories: cognitive processes, personal pronoun use, insight, time, and ingestion. In contrast, total word count and percentage of sexual words, two categories that might be assumed to be predictive of recidivism, were not significantly different between these two groups. These analyses help to develop a typology for an Internet sex reoffender as one who is dominant, nonequivocating, and likely to discuss meeting with their target and/or parents' schedules. Moreover, they highlight the importance of examining the functional aspects of language in forensic linguistic analysis, and exemplify the utility of computerized linguistic analyses in the courtroom.

Homophily in an Anonymous Online Community: Sociodemographic Versus Personality Traits

In what traits do people interact with others who are similar to them in completely anonymous online communication? Can those traits contribute to greater exchange of opinion and information across the sociodemographic boundaries that often limit interaction between social strata? To answer this question concerning online homophily, we combined survey data on 7,287 users (aged 18 and above) of a Korean online dating advice platform with their behavioral data from June 2015 to August 2015 and explored whether advice exchange occurred between users with similar sociodemographic and personality traits. On this platform, two types of interactions occurred as follows: (1) responses to a randomly distributed problem submitted by an advice seeker and (2) the seeker's indication of approval of any of the responses given. The study found that (1) a receiver was more likely to respond to problems submitted by seekers of a comparable age and that (2) seekers were more likely to approve of a response if the seeker and receiver had similar educational backgrounds. By contrast, homophily based on personality traits was not observed even though some personality traits significantly affected the likelihood of both response and approval. Our findings suggest that online communication may breed sociodemographic homophily, whether based on age or education, more than expected or intended while not easily fostering alternative forms of homophily, such as personality homophily, which can potentially cut across borders dividing sociodemographic groups.

Dying Is Unexpectedly Positive

In people's imagination, dying seems dreadful; however, these perceptions may not reflect reality. In two studies, we compared the affective experience of people facing imminent death with that of people imagining imminent death. Study 1 revealed that blog posts of near-death patients with cancer and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis were more positive and less negative than the simulated blog posts of nonpatients-and also that the patients' blog posts became more positive as death neared. Study 2 revealed that the last words of death-row inmates were more positive and less negative than the simulated last words of noninmates-and also that these last words were less negative than poetry written by death-row inmates. Together, these results suggest that the experience of dying-even because of terminal illness or execution-may be more pleasant than one imagines.

Treating conduct disorder: An effectiveness and natural language analysis study of a new family-centred intervention program

This paper reports on a new family-centred, feedback-informed intervention focused on evaluating therapeutic outcomes and language changes across treatment for conduct disorder (CD). The study included 26 youth and families from a larger randomised, controlled trial (Ronan et al., in preparation). Outcome measures reflected family functioning/youth compliance, delinquency, and family goal attainment. First- and last-treatment session audio files were transcribed into more than 286,000 words and evaluated through the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Analysis program (Pennebaker et al., 2007). Significant outcomes across family functioning/youth compliance, delinquency, goal attainment and word usage reflected moderate-strong effect sizes. Benchmarking findings also revealed reduced time of treatment delivery compared to a gold standard approach. Linguistic analysis revealed specific language changes across treatment. For caregivers, increased first person, action-oriented, present tense, and assent type words and decreased sadness words were found; for youth, significant reduction in use of leisure words. This study is the first using lexical analyses of natural language to assess change across treatment for conduct disordered youth and families. Such findings provided strong support for program tenets; others, more speculative support.

Genuine eye contact elicits self-referential processing

The effect of eye contact on self-awareness was investigated with implicit measures based on the use of first-person singular pronouns in sentences. The measures were proposed to tap into self-referential processing, that is, information processing associated with self-awareness. In addition, participants filled in a questionnaire measuring explicit self-awareness. In Experiment 1, the stimulus was a video clip showing another person and, in Experiment 2, the stimulus was a live person. In both experiments, participants were divided into two groups and presented with the stimulus person either making eye contact or gazing downward, depending on the group assignment. During the task, the gaze stimulus was presented before each trial of the pronoun-selection task. Eye contact was found to increase the use of first-person pronouns, but only when participants were facing a real person, not when they were looking at a video of a person. No difference in self-reported self-awareness was found between the two gaze direction groups in either experiment. The results indicate that eye contact elicits self-referential processing, but the effect may be stronger, or possibly limited to, live interaction.

Closing achievement gaps with a utility-value intervention: Disentangling race and social class

Many college students abandon their goal of completing a degree in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) when confronted with challenging introductory-level science courses. In the U.S., this trend is more pronounced for underrepresented minority (URM) and first-generation (FG) students, and contributes to persisting racial and social-class achievement gaps in higher education. Previous intervention studies have focused exclusively on race or social class, but have not examined how the 2 may be confounded and interact. This research therefore investigates the independent and interactive effects of race and social class as moderators of an intervention designed to promote performance, measured by grade in the course. In a double-blind randomized experiment conducted over 4 semesters of an introductory biology course (N = 1,040), we tested the effectiveness of a utility-value intervention in which students wrote about the personal relevance of course material. The utility-value intervention was successful in reducing the achievement gap for FG-URM students by 61%: the performance gap for FG-URM students, relative to continuing generation (CG)-Majority students, was large in the control condition, .84 grade points (d = .98), and the treatment effect for FG-URM students was .51 grade points (d = 0.55). The UV intervention helped students from all groups find utility value in the course content, and mediation analyses showed that the process of writing about utility value was particularly powerful for FG-URM students. Results highlight the importance of intersectionality in examining the independent and interactive effects of race and social class when evaluating interventions to close achievement gaps and the mechanisms through which they may operate. (PsycINFO Database Record

EXAMINING PARENTS' ROMANTIC ATTACHMENT STYLES AND DEPRESSIVE AND ANXIETY SYMPTOMS AS PREDICTORS OF CAREGIVING EXPERIENCES

Evidence has suggested that parental romantic attachment style and depressive and anxiety symptoms are related to experiences of caregiving (Creswell, Apetroaia, Murray, & Cooper, 2013; Jones, Cassidy, & Shaver, 2014; Lovejoy, Graczyk, O'Hare, & Neuman, 2000), but more research is necessary to clarify the nature of these relations, particularly in the context of attachment-salient events such as reunions. In a cross-sectional study of 150 parents of children ages 1 to 3 years, we assessed participants' attachment styles (self-reported anxiety and avoidance) and depressive and anxiety symptoms. Participants generated a narrative describing their most recent reunion with their child, which we coded for caregiving outcomes of negative emotion and secure base script content. Attachment style and depressive and anxiety symptoms separately predicted each caregiving outcome. Depressive and anxiety symptoms mediated the associations between attachment style and caregiving outcomes. These results suggest that parental attachment insecurity and depressive and anxiety symptoms contribute to negative emotion and reduced secure base script content. Further, depressive and anxiety symptomatology partially accounts for the relation between attachment insecurity and caregiving outcomes, suggesting that parental mental health is a critical point for intervention.

Linguistic Agency and Life-Span Longevity

OBJECTIVES

Agency has been conceptualized as a drive toward mastery, control, and effective self-management. Such an agentic approach to life and its challenges may be life-prolonging, a hypothesis not previously investigated.

METHOD

In four studies, individual differences in agency were assessed in terms of the frequency with which agency-related words (e.g., "achieve," "fix," and "control") were mentioned in archived interviews or speeches (N = 210).

RESULTS

Higher levels of linguistic agency predicted longer life-spans among prominent physicists (study 1: n = 60, β = .30, t = 2.30, p = .025), historians (study 2: n = 69, β = .29, t = 2.47, p = .016), psychologists (study 3: n = 45, β = .32, t = 2.35, p = .024), and American presidents (study 4: n = 36, β = .75, t = 2.74, p = .010) when adjusting for birth year. Considered from another angle, life-span longevity averaged 8 years longer at a high (+1 standard deviation) relative to low (-1 standard deviation) level of the linguistic agency continuum, a marked difference. Follow-up analyses indicated that these results could not be attributed to covarying levels of positive emotion, negative emotion, or social connection, as quantified in terms of other linguistic categories.

CONCLUSIONS

The investigation provides unique support for agentic perspectives on health, and several potential mechanisms are discussed.

Differences in Styles of Writing about a Tragic Public Event over Time

This pilot study analyzed the actual language used in two writing samples by university students (8 men, 28 women) about a tragic public incident, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack. To analyze samples a computer-based text-analysis program with a wide range of psychological dimensions and linguistic variables was used. More words and more past tense verbs were used right after the incident. Words related to religion, family, and home increased dramatically right after the incident.

Los Secretos de Cien Años de Soledad: Una Aproximación Estilométrica para la Investigación en Psicolingüística

<p>De acuerdo con la estilística y crítica literaria la obra Cien Años de Soledad, escrita por Gabriel García Márquez, se caracteriza por una alusión constante a los personajes de la historia y un narrador que usa un tono neutro para relatar los eventos. En este artículo se utilizan métodos estilométricos para ratificar tales afirmaciones y proveer nuevos resultados acerca de esta novela. Los hallazgos indican que el autor hace uso de palabras abstractas y palabras referentes a objetos con los que se puede interactuar físicamente para producir el efecto lingüístico característico del realismo mágico. Dada la importancia de los resultados a partir de métodos estilométricos, se plantean algunas ideas acerca de las implicaciones que esta metodología puede tener en áreas de la psicolingüística y de la psicología cognitiva.</p>

Somatic and Social: Chinese Americans Talk about Emotion

Empirical findings suggest that Chinese and Americans differ in the ways that they describe emotional experience, with Chinese using more somatic and social words than Americans. No one, however, has investigated whether this variation is related to differences between Chinese and American conceptions of emotion or to linguistic differences between the English and Chinese languages. Therefore, in two studies, the authors compared the word use of individuals who varied in their orientation to Chinese and American cultures (European Americans [EA], more acculturated Chinese Americans [CA], and less acculturated CA) when they were speaking English during emotional events. Across both studies, less acculturated CA used more somatic (e.g., dizzy) and more social (e.g., friend) words than EA. These findings suggest that even when controlling for language spoken, cultural conceptions of emotion may shape how people talk about emotion.

Lying Words: Predicting Deception from Linguistic Styles

Telling lies often requires creating a story about an experience or attitude that does not exist. As a result, false stories may be qualitatively different from true stories. The current project investigated the features of linguistic style that distinguish between true and false stories. In an analysis of five independent samples, a computer-based text analysis program correctly classified liars and truth-tellers at a rate of 67% when the topic was constant and a rate of 61% overall. Compared to truth-tellers, liars showed lower cognitive complexity, used fewer self-references and other-references, and used more negative emotion words.

Selves Creating Stories Creating Selves: A Process Model of Self-Development

This article is focused on the growing empirical emphasis on connections between narrative and self-development. The authors propose a process model of self-development in which storytelling is at the heart of both stability and change in the self. Specifically, we focus on how situated stories help develop and maintain the self with reciprocal impacts on enduring aspects of self, specifically self-concept and the life story. This article emphasizes the research that has shown how autobiographical stories affect the self and provides a direction for future work to maximize the potential of narrative approaches to studying processes of self-development.

Patterns of Natural Language Use: Disclosure, Personality, and Social Integration

When people write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about an emotionally significant event, numerous benefits in many domains (e.g., health, achievement, and well-being) result. As one step in understanding how writing achieves these effects, we have developed a computer program that provides a “fingerprint” of the words people use in writing or in natural settings. Analyses of text samples indicate that particular patterns of word use predict health and also reflect personality styles. We have also discovered that language use in the laboratory writing paradigm is associated with changes in social interactions and language use in the real world. The implications for using computer-based text analysis programs in the development of psychological theory are discussed.

Favorite Activity Interview as a Window into the Identity of People with Parkinson's Disease

The purpose of this study was to document the degree to which a brief segment of an occupational therapy interview about favorite activities served as a window into personal identity and experience in clients with Parkinson's disease. Two-minute segments of videotaped interviews of 12 participants with Parkinson's disease were transcribed and analyzed. A verbal content measure was developed, its reliability tested, and its items correlated with participants' self-rated personality and mood. Overall, the inter-rater reliability for this verbal content measure was acceptably high, and many expected associations between participant verbal content and participant identity as related to personality and mood were found. The results tentatively suggest that the client's discussion of favorite activity participation, as well as the tone and frequency of the client's verbal communication, can provide insight into the identity of the client, and this information is available to the practitioner even for clients who have difficulty expressing their identities nonverbally. This exploratory study establishes a foundation for further research in the area of identity expression through verbal content in individuals with diminished nonverbal expressiveness.

Linguistic Markers of Inference Generation While Reading

Words can be informative linguistic markers of psychological constructs. The purpose of this study is to examine associations between word use and the process of making meaningful connections to a text while reading (i.e., inference generation). To achieve this purpose, think-aloud data from third-fifth grade students ([Formula: see text]) reading narrative texts were hand-coded for inferences. These data were also processed with a computer text analysis tool, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, for percentages of word use in the following categories: cognitive mechanism words, nonfluencies, and nine types of function words. Findings indicate that cognitive mechanisms were an independent, positive predictor of connections to background knowledge (i.e., elaborative inference generation) and nonfluencies were an independent, negative predictor of connections within the text (i.e., bridging inference generation). Function words did not provide unique variance towards predicting inference generation. These findings are discussed in the context of a cognitive reflection model and the differences between bridging and elaborative inference generation. In addition, potential practical implications for intelligent tutoring systems and computer-based methods of inference identification are presented.

Volunteerism Tendency Prediction via Harvesting Multiple Social Networks

Volunteers have always been extremely crucial and in urgent need for nonprofit organizations (NPOs) to sustain their continuing operations. However, it is expensive and time-consuming to recruit volunteers using traditional approaches. In the Web 2.0 era, abundant and ubiquitous social media data opens a door to the possibility of automatic volunteer identification. In this article, we aim to fully explore this possibility by proposing a scheme that is able to predict users’ volunteerism tendency from user-generated contents collected from multiple social networks based on a conceptual volunteering decision model. We conducted comprehensive experiments to investigate the effectiveness of our proposed scheme and further discussed its generalizibility and extendability. This novel interdisciplinary research will potentially inspire more promising and important human-centered applications.

Effects of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine on socioemotional feelings, authenticity, and autobiographical disclosure in healthy volunteers in a controlled setting

The drug 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "ecstasy", "molly") is a widely used illicit drug and experimental adjunct to psychotherapy. MDMA has unusual, poorly understood socioemotional effects, including feelings of interpersonal closeness and sociability. To better understand these effects, we conducted a small (n=12) within-subjects double-blind placebo controlled study of the effects of 1.5 mg/kg oral MDMA on social emotions and autobiographical disclosure in a controlled setting. MDMA displayed both sedative- and stimulant-like effects, including increased self-report anxiety. At the same time, MDMA positively altered evaluation of the self (i.e. increasing feelings of authenticity) while decreasing concerns about negative evaluation by others (i.e. decreasing social anxiety). Consistent with these feelings, MDMA increased how comfortable participants felt describing emotional memories. Overall, MDMA produced a prosocial syndrome that seemed to facilitate emotional disclosure and that appears consistent with the suggestion that it represents a novel pharmacological class.

The implicit power motive predicts action selection

Previous research has indicated that implicit motives can reliably predict which behaviors people select or decide to perform. However, so far, the question of how these motives are able to predict this action selection process has received little attention. Based on ideomotor theory, we argue that implicit motives can predict action selection when an action has become associated with a motive-congruent (dis)incentive through repeated experiences with the action-outcome relationship. This idea was investigated by examining whether the implicit need for power (nPower) would come to predict action selection (i.e., choosing to press either of two buttons) when these actions had repeatedly resulted in motive-congruent (dis)incentives (i.e., submissive or dominant faces). Both Studies 1 and 2 indicated that participants became more likely to select the action predictive of the motive-congruent outcome as their history with the action-outcome relationship increased. Study 2 indicated that this effect stemmed from both an approach towards incentives and an avoidance of disincentives. These results indicate that implicit motives (particularly the power motive) can predict action selection as a result of learning which actions yield motive-congruent (dis)incentives. Our findings therefore offer a model of how implicit motives can come to predict which behaviors people select to perform.

The Effectiveness of Somatization in Communicating Distress in Korean and American Cultural Contexts

Previous research has documented that Asians tend to somatize negative experiences to a greater degree than Westerners. It is posited that somatization may be a more functional communication strategy in Korean than American context. We examined the effects of somatization in communications of distress among participants from the US and Korea. We predicted that the communicative benefits of somatic words used in distress narratives would depend on the cultural contexts. In Study 1, we found that Korean participants used more somatic words to communicate distress than US participants. Among Korean participants, but not US participants, use of somatic words predicted perceived effectiveness of the communication and expectations of positive reactions (e.g., empathy) from others. In Study 2, we found that when presented with distress narratives of others, Koreans (but not Americans) showed more sympathy in response to narratives using somatic words than narratives using emotional words. These findings suggest that cultural differences in use of somatization may reflect differential effectiveness of somatization in communicating distress across cultural contexts.

If You're House Is Still Available, Send Me an Email: Personality Influences Reactions to Written Errors in Email Messages

The increasing prevalence of social media means that we often encounter written language characterized by both stylistic variation and outright errors. How does the personality of the reader modulate reactions to non-standard text? Experimental participants read ‘email responses’ to an ad for a housemate that either contained no errors or had been altered to include either typos (e.g., teh) or homophonous grammar errors (grammos, e.g., to/too, it’s/its). Participants completed a 10-item evaluation scale for each message, which measured their impressions of the writer. In addition participants completed a Big Five personality assessment and answered demographic and language attitude questions. Both typos and grammos had a negative impact on the evaluation scale. This negative impact was not modulated by age, education, electronic communication frequency, or pleasure reading time. In contrast, personality traits did modulate assessments, and did so in distinct ways for grammos and typos.

A LONGITUDINAL EXAMINATION OF TODDLERS' BEHAVIORAL CUES AS A FUNCTION OF SUBSTANCE-ABUSING MOTHERS' DISENGAGEMENT

As a group, substance-abusing parents are at risk for maladaptive parenting. The association between substance abuse and parenting may result, in part, from parents' emotional disengagement from the parent-child relationship, which makes perceiving and responding to children's cues more challenging. In this study, we examined whether substance-abusing mothers' levels of disengagement from their relationship with their children (ages 2-44 months), operationalized in two different ways using parenting narratives (representational and linguistic disengagement), prospectively predicted children's engagement and disengagement cues during a structured mother-child interaction. Within a sample of 29 mothers, we tested the hypotheses that greater maternal disengagement at Time 1 would predict a decrease in children's engagement and an increase in children's disengagement at Time 2. Results indicated that representational disengagement predicted a decrease in children's engagement cues whereas linguistic disengagement predicted an increase in children's disengagement cues. Results provide partial support for a reciprocal, iterative process in which mothers and children mutually adjust their emotional and behavioral disengagement with one another.

Personality expression in Chinese language use

To date, little research has investigated personality expressions in languages other than English. Given that the Chinese language has the largest number of native speakers in the world, it is vitally important to examine the associations between personality and Chinese language use. In this research, we analysed Chinese microblogs and identified word categories and factorial structures associated with personality traits. We also compared our results with previous findings in English and showed that linguistic expression of personality has both universal- and language-specific aspects. Expression of personality via content words is more likely to be consistent across languages than expression via function words. This makes an important step towards uncovering universal patterns of personality expression in language.

First-person Pronoun Use in Spoken Language as a Predictor of Future Depressive Symptoms: Preliminary Evidence from a Clinical Sample of Depressed Patients

Several theories suggest that self-focused attention plays an important role in the maintenance of depression. However, previous studies have predominantly relied on self-report and laboratory-based measures such as sentence completion tasks to assess individual differences in self-focus. We present a prospective, longitudinal study based on a sample of 29 inpatients with clinical depression, investigating whether an implicit, behavioural measure of self-focused attention, i.e., the relative frequency of first-person singular pronouns in naturally spoken language, predicts depressive symptoms at follow-up over and above initial depression. We did not find a significant cross-sectional association between depressive symptoms and first-person singular pronoun use. However, first-person singular pronoun use significantly predicted depressive symptoms approximately 8 months later, even after controlling for depressive symptoms at baseline or discharge. Exploratory analyses revealed that this effect was mainly driven by the use of objective and possessive self-references such as 'me' or 'my'. Our findings are in line with theories that highlight individual differences in self-focused attention as a predictor of the course of depression. Moreover, our findings extend previous work in this field by adopting an unobtrusive approach of non-reactive assessment, capturing naturally occurring differences in self-focused attention. We discuss possible clinical applications of language-based assessments and interventions with regard to self-focus. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

KEY PRACTITIONER MESSAGE

Naturally occurring individual differences in first-person singular pronoun use provide an unobtrusive way to assess patients' automatic self-focused attention. Frequent use of first-person singular pronouns predicts an unfavourable course of depression. Self-focused language might offer innovative ways of tracking and targeting therapeutic change.

Shedding light on the specificity of school-aged children's attachment narratives

A prominent research tradition within the field of attachment involves analyzing relationship narratives for qualities thought to reveal important information regarding the organization of attachment, and the different ways in which attachment insecurity presents. Researchers increasingly use this method to assess attachment in middle childhood, but further work needs to be conducted with respect to the divergent validity of attachment narratives in this age range. Thus, the current study examined differential associations between children's discursive style and linguistic behavior when completing an attachment interview (Child Attachment Interview [CAI]) and Non-Relational Interview (NRI). In addition, the discriminant validity of attachment narratives was assessed in predicting children's physiological reactivity to a relational challenge. Children (N = 125) completed the NRI and the CAI at Time 1. A subset of the original sample (n = 64) completed another assessment 1.5 years later involving simulated non-relational and relational challenges. While narrative coherence was moderately associated across the two interviews, CAI narrative coherence uniquely predicted reactivity to a relational probe. We discuss implications for understanding children's narrative styles across discourse topics as well as the significance of the results for using attachment interviews in this age range.

Positive Emotional Language in the Final Words Spoken Directly Before Execution

How do individuals emotionally cope with the imminent real-world salience of mortality? DeWall and Baumeister as well as Kashdan and colleagues previously provided support that an increased use of positive emotion words serves as a way to protect and defend against mortality salience of one’s own contemplated death. Although these studies provide important insights into the psychological dynamics of mortality salience, it remains an open question how individuals cope with the immense threat of mortality prior to their imminent actual death. In the present research, we therefore analyzed positivity in the final words spoken immediately before execution by 407 death row inmates in Texas. By using computerized quantitative text analysis as an objective measure of emotional language use, our results showed that the final words contained a significantly higher proportion of positive than negative emotion words. This emotional positivity was significantly higher than (a) positive emotion word usage base rates in spoken and written materials and (b) positive emotional language use with regard to contemplated death and attempted or actual suicide. Additional analyses showed that emotional positivity in final statements was associated with a greater frequency of language use that was indicative of self-references, social orientation, and present-oriented time focus as well as with fewer instances of cognitive-processing, past-oriented, and death-related word use. Taken together, our findings offer new insights into how individuals cope with the imminent real-world salience of mortality.

The feeling of the story: Narrating to regulate anger and sadness

Admonitions to tell one's story in order to feel better reflect the belief that narrative is an effective emotion regulation tool. The present studies evaluate the effectiveness of narrative for regulating sadness and anger, and provide quantitative comparisons of narrative with distraction, reappraisal, and reexposure. The results for sadness (n = 93) and anger (n = 89) reveal that narrative is effective at down-regulating negative emotions, particularly when narratives place events in the past tense and include positive emotions. The results suggest that if people tell the "right" kind of story about their experiences, narrative reduces emotional distress linked to those experiences.

Don't worry, be (moderately) happy: Mothers' anxiety and positivity during pregnancy independently predict lower mother-infant synchrony

Maternal positivity and mother-infant synchrony have been linked, independently, to beneficial infant outcomes; however, research that has examined relations between the two has found that higher positivity is associated with lower synchrony. Methodological issues may inform this counter-intuitive association and clinical theory supports its validity. This study examined the theory that heightened positivity associated with anxiety is a way of avoiding negative emotion and contributes to lower synchrony because it interferes with appropriate responding to infant cues. We examined mothers' (N=75) self-reported anxiety and verbal expression of positivity during pregnancy in relation to mother-infant synchrony at 6 months post-partum. Verbal positivity was assessed using linguistic analysis of interviews about pregnancy experiences. Mother and infant affect and gaze were coded during interaction and synchrony was computed as the correlation between mother and infant behaviors. Higher verbal positivity and anxiety during pregnancy independently predicted lower mother-infant synchrony, suggesting distinct pathways to the same degree of synchrony with potentially different consequences for infant development.

Mood-incongruent processing during the recall of a sad life event predicts the course and severity of depression

BACKGROUND

Previous studies suggest that mood-incongruent processing constitutes an adaptive mood regulation strategy, and that difficulties in this process may contribute to the maintenance of depression. However, no study has yet examined whether mood-incongruent processing predicts the course and severity of clinical depression.

METHODS

To address this question, the present study used a prospective, longitudinal design to examine the effects of mood-incongruent processing in a sample of 59 clinically depressed patients. At baseline, participants were asked to recall and describe a sad and a happy life event. Participants' utterances were transcribed and analysed using computerized text analysis. Negated emotion words were excluded. The proportion of positive emotion words during sad memory recall was used as an indicator of mood-incongruent processing. After 6 months, participants were re-assessed for symptom levels and the criteria of major depressive disorder (MDD) during the follow-up period.

RESULTS

Higher relative frequency of positive emotion words during sad memory recall was associated with less symptoms of depression at follow-up and shorter time to recovery from MDD, over and above baseline symptoms of depression. The effect was not just due to increased general positivity in emotional expression or emotional expressiveness per se.

LIMITATIONS

The sample size and the timeframe for the follow-up assessment were limited. Furthermore, it is unknown to which degree word use reflects the actual experience of the expressed emotions.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings highlight the role of mood-incongruent processing in the maintenance of depression and advocate a stronger focus on mood-incongruent processing in the treatment of depression.

Me, myself, and I: self-referent word use as an indicator of self-focused attention in relation to depression and anxiety

Self-focused attention (SFA) is considered a cognitive bias that is closely related to depression. However, it is not yet well understood whether it represents a disorder-specific or a trans-diagnostic phenomenon and which role the valence of a given context is playing in this regard. Computerized quantitative text-analysis offers an integrative psycho-linguistic approach that may help to provide new insights into these complex relationships. The relative frequency of first-person singular pronouns in natural language is regarded as an objective, linguistic marker of SFA. Here we present two studies that examined the associations between SFA and symptoms of depression and anxiety in two different contexts (positive vs. negative valence), as well as the convergence between pronoun-use and self-reported aspects of SFA. In the first study, we found that the use of first-person singular pronouns during negative but not during positive memory recall was positively related to symptoms of depression and anxiety in patients with anorexia nervosa with varying levels of co-morbid depression and anxiety. In the second study, we found the same pattern of results in non-depressed individuals. In addition, use of first-person singular pronouns during negative memory recall was positively related to brooding (i.e., the assumed maladaptive sub-component of rumination) but not to reflection. These findings could not be replicated in two samples of depressed patients. However, non-chronically depressed patients used more first-person singular pronouns than healthy controls, irrespective of context. Taken together, the findings lend partial support to theoretical models that emphasize the effects of context on self-focus and consider SFA as a relevant trans-diagnostic phenomenon. In addition, the present findings point to the construct validity of pronoun-use as a linguistic marker of maladaptive self-focus.

College Students With ADHD Traits and Their Language Styles

OBJECTIVE

As an exploratory study, this article investigated the relationship between ADHD symptoms and the style of language use of undergraduate college students in Korea.

METHOD

For this study, participants were asked to use stream-of-consciousness writing about any topic. Then, each participant's piece of writing was analyzed by the Korean Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (KLIWC), a language analysis program.

RESULTS

The findings in this study demonstrated that college students with ADHD symptoms used significantly less "clauses per sentence," "morphemes per sentence," "numeral pronouns," "English," and "home," whereas they used significantly more "sentences," "adjectives," and "TV and movie" in their consciousness writing.

CONCLUSION

This study indicates that college students with ADHD traits have a different language style from their non-ADHD cohorts. Further research studies should be conducted to replicate our findings and develop specific interventions accordingly.

In the Mood for Vlog

The prevalent “share what's on your mind” paradigm of social media can be examined from the perspective of mood: short-term affective states revealed by the shared data. This view takes on new relevance given the emergence of conversational social video as a popular genre among viewers looking for entertainment and among video contributors as a channel for debate, expertise sharing, and artistic expression. From the perspective of human behavior understanding, in conversational social video both verbal and nonverbal information is conveyed by speakers and decoded by viewers. We present a systematic study of classification and ranking of mood impressions in social video, using vlogs from YouTube. Our approach considers eleven natural mood categories labeled through crowdsourcing by external observers on a diverse set of conversational vlogs. We extract a comprehensive number of nonverbal and verbal behavioral cues from the audio and video channels to characterize the mood of vloggers. Then we implement and validate vlog classification and vlog ranking tasks using supervised learning methods. Following a reliability and correlation analysis of the mood impression data, our study demonstrates that, while the problem is challenging, several mood categories can be inferred with promising performance. Furthermore, multimodal features perform consistently better than single-channel features. Finally, we show that addressing mood as a ranking problem is a promising practical direction for several of the mood categories studied.