Phonetic measures of reduced tongue movement correlate with negative symptom severity in hospitalized patients with first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum disorders

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Michael A. Covington, University of Georgia; S. L. Anya Lunden, University of Georgia; Sarah L. Cristofaro, Emory University; Claire R. Wan, Emory University; C. Thomas Bailey, University of Georgia; Beth Broussard, George Washington University; Robert Fogarty, University of Georgia; Stephanie Brown-Johnson, Emory University; Shayi Zhang, University of Georgia; Michael T. Compton, George Washington University
• Language: English
• Date: 2012-12-01
• Publisher: Elsevier: 12 months
• Publication Version: Author Accepted Manuscript (After Peer Review)
• Copyright Statement: © 2012 Elsevier B.V. CC BY NC ND 4.0
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2012.10.005
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Schizophrenia Research
• ISSN: 0920-9964
• Volume: 142
• Issue: 1-3
• Start Page: 93
• End Page: 95
• Grant/Funding Information: This work was supported by grant R01 MH081011 from the National Institute of Mental Health to the last author.
• Keywords: VOICE; Aprosody; DEPRESSED-PATIENTS; SPEECH; FLAT AFFECT; Science & Technology; Psychiatry; First-episode psychosis; Schizophrenia; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; Linguistics; ACOUSTIC MEASURES; ACCURACY; Phonetics
• Research Categories: Language, Linguistics; Psychology, Behavioral

Abstract

Background: Aprosody, or flattened speech intonation, is a recognized negative symptom of schizophrenia, though it has rarely been studied from a linguistic/phonological perspective. To bring the latest advances in computational linguistics to the phenomenology of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders, a clinical first-episode psychosis research team joined with a phonetics/computational linguistics team to conduct a preliminary, proof-of-concept study. Methods: Video recordings from a semi-structured clinical research interview were available from 47 first-episode psychosis patients. Audio tracks of the video recordings were extracted, and after review of quality, 25 recordings were available for phonetic analysis. These files were de-noised and a trained phonologist extracted a 1-minute sample of each patient's speech. WaveSurfer 1.8.5 was used to create, from each speech sample, a file of formant values (F0, F1, F2, where F0 is the fundamental frequency and F1 and F2 are resonance bands indicating the moment-by-moment shape of the oral cavity). Variability in these phonetic indices was correlated with severity of Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale negative symptom scores using Pearson correlations. Results: A measure of variability of tongue front-to-back position-the standard deviation of F2-was statistically significantly correlated with the severity of negative symptoms (r= - 0.446, p=0.03). Conclusion: This study demonstrates a statistically significant and meaningful correlation between negative symptom severity and phonetically measured reductions in tongue movements during speech in a sample of first-episode patients just initiating treatment. Further studies of negative symptoms, applying computational linguistics methods, are warranted.