Emergence of Language Related to Self-experience and Agency in Autobiographical Narratives of Individuals With Schizophrenia.
Chi C Chan, Raquel Norel, Carla Agurto, Paul H Lysaker, Evan J Myers, Erin A Hazlett, Cheryl M Corcoran, Kyle S Minor, Guillermo Cecchi
Schizophrenia Bulletin March 15, 2023 DOI: 10.1093/schbul/sbac126 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational cohort Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 257 |
| Population | Patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and healthy controls |
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Artificial intelligence Machine learning Natural language processing Psychosis Self-disturbance |
| Citations | 22 |
| Key findings | Topics related to self-experience and agency were significantly more expressed in patients with schizophrenia than in healthy controls and were decoupled from emotional tone, semantic coherence, and burden-related concepts. |
Abstract
Disturbances in self-experience are a central feature of schizophrenia and its study can enhance phenomenological understanding and inform mechanisms underlying clinical symptoms. Self-experience involves the sense of self-presence, of being the subject of one's own experiences and agent of one's own actions, and of being distinct from others. Self-experience is traditionally assessed by manual rating of interviews; however, natural language processing (NLP) offers automated approach that can augment manual ratings by rapid and reliable analysis of text. We elicited autobiographical narratives from 167 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (SZ) and 90 healthy controls (HC), amounting to 490 000 words and 26 000 sentences. We used NLP techniques to examine transcripts for language related to self-experience, machine learning to validate group differences in language, and canonical correlation analysis to examine the relationship between language and symptoms. Topics related to self-experience and agency emerged as significantly more expressed in SZ than HC (P < 10-13) and were decoupled from similarly emerging features such as emotional tone, semantic coherence, and concepts related to burden. Further validation on hold-out data showed that a classifier trained on these features achieved patient-control discrimination with AUC = 0.80 (P < 10-5). Canonical correlation analysis revealed significant relationships between self-experience and agency language features and clinical symptoms. Notably, the self-experience and agency topics emerged without any explicit probing by the interviewer and can be algorithmically detected even though they involve higher-order metacognitive processes. These findings illustrate the utility of NLP methods to examine phenomenological aspects of schizophrenia.
Comparable studies
Other observational and cohort studies on philosophy of mind, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The phenomenology of near-death experiences Subjects who reported near-death experiences | 1980 | Retrospective study | n = 78 |
| Visual Phenomenology of the LSD Flashback Persons with a history of LSD use | 1983 | Observational cohort | n = 123 |
| The neurophenomenology of neutral hypnosis. Individuals of high, medium, and low hypnotizability | 2013 | Observational cohort | n = 37 |
| The Phenomenology of Acute Organic Psychosis Patients with acute organic psychosis and acute schizophrenics | 1987 | Observational cohort | n = 148 |
| EEG oscillatory states as neuro-phenomenology of consciousness as revealed from patients in vegetative and minimally conscious states. Brain-damaged patients with disorders of consciousness and healthy-conscious subjects | 2012 | Observational cohort |
Citations in the library
Cited by 2
- Towards a Neurophenomenological Understanding of Self-Disorder in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders: A Systematic Review and Synthesis of Anatomical, Physiological, and Neurocognitive Findings Brain Sciences May 23, 2023
- Differential Expression of Anomalous Self-Experiences in Spontaneous Speech in Clinical High-Risk and Early-Course Psychosis Quantified by Natural Language Processing. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging July 5, 2023
Cites 6
- Disturbances in Self-Experience in Schizophrenia: Metacognition and the Development of an Integrative Recovery-Oriented Individual Psychotherapy. Psychopathology 2019
- The Inventory of Psychotic-Like Anomalous Self-Experiences (IPASE): Development and validation. Psychological Assessment January 2017
- Self-disturbances in schizophrenia: history, phenomenology, and relevant findings from research on metacognition. Schizophrenia Bulletin January 2014
- Schizophrenia and alterations in self-experience: a comparison of 6 perspectives. Schizophrenia Bulletin July 17, 2008
- Self-consciousness, self-agency, and schizophrenia. Consciousness and Cognition December 2003
and 1 more in the library