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Most of the time, people don't actively track the way one thought flows into the next. But in psychiatry, much attention is paid to such intricacies of thinking. For instance, disorganized thought, evidenced by disjointed patterns in speech, is considered a hallmark characteristic of schizophrenia. Several studies of at-risk youths have found that doctors are able to guess with impressive accuracy—the best predictive models hover around 79 percent—whether a person will develop psychosis based on tracking that person's speech patterns in interviews.
A computer, it seems, can do better.
That's according to a study published Wednesday by researchers at Columbia University, the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in the Nature Publishing Group journal Schizophrenia. They used an automated speech-analysis program to correctly differentiate—with 100-percent accuracy—between at-risk young people who developed psychosis over a two-and-a-half year period and those who did not. The computer model also outperformed other advanced screening technologies, like biomarkers from neuroimaging and EEG recordings of brain activity.
The article does not elaborate on how the transcripts are produced.
Automated analysis of free speech predicts psychosis onset in high-risk youths
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday August 28 2015, @02:48PM
For instance, disorganized thought, evidenced by disjointed patterns in speech, is considered a hallmark characteristic of schizophrenia
Oh my. I may have a serious problem, then.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday August 28 2015, @02:51PM
I don't need an AI to track it, either. My wife has marveled at my seemingly disjointed, all-over-the-map thoughts since before she married me. (She married me anyway, so it must be endearing.)
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @03:05PM
Maybe she's just after your money?
(Score: 4, Informative) by jdavidb on Friday August 28 2015, @03:24PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @03:01PM
Where's VLM?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday August 28 2015, @03:12PM
Well, it's more specific than that, if you look at the article. The case they show is someone following a sentence with another, where the pronouns indicate a relationship to the first sentence, but the semantic meaning doesn't.
Besides, if you're married, you're probably not about to hit puberty, where psychosis tends to set in.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Hyperturtle on Friday August 28 2015, @04:56PM
Dr. Cortana will diagnose you and upload your results to the internet now.
How does an advertising ID with a known schizophrenic alter how the personalized ads are packaged and sold for your viewing? Do you get more of the same ones, or slightly different ones, or do you get ads with audio that has different messages from each speaker...?
Don't tell me they won't be analyzing this. It was only a matter of time before car companies offered a discount to plug into your driving habits.
Marketers and insurers will want to know and will demand it--if you speak in public, then you can be analyzed. Nothing private about that, they'll say...
So speak directly into the microphone, we don't want to risk charging you less via a false diagnosis of good mental health.
If you do not speak into the microphone, then you will be indicated as suffering from paranoia; also profitable for marketing and insurance alike.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @05:46PM
More likely that you'll be flagged by a private database, which in turn will hand that data straight to the government, who will follow all of your moves online and in real-life. You may be put on the no-fly list, prevented from purchasing firearms, and other things you would want to get done won't be done because pre-crime.
"Mental illness" along with "racism*" are two hot new bogeymen-labels emerging because terrorism and pedophilia have been too played-out to actually scare anybody nowadays.
* The de-facto banning of the Confederate flag probably had more to do with that it was a symbol of seccessionism amidst record levels of discontent with the central government, rather than racism -- but only a racist would agree with that, and you're not racist, are you?
-- Ethanol-Fueled posting anon cuz can't be arsed to dig up new strong password
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @07:22PM
It's worrisome that for the second time in less than two weeks, this quote from Paranoia, the RPG, is fitting:
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday August 28 2015, @09:25PM
FTFY (no, I'm not saying "me too". Read again)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford