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, social, or functional proximity of the speaker to the referent object. Recent evidence based on the Demonstrative Choice Task (DCT), in which participants couple words with a spatial demonstrative with no context provided, suggests that demonstrative use is also 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 individual dif

SUBMITTER: Kruse L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11918855 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature