Analyzing acoustic and prosodic fluctuations in free speech to predict psychosis onset in high-risk youths

Carla Agurto, Mary Pietrowicz, Raquel Norel, Elif K. Eyigoz, Emma Stanislawski, Guillermo Cecchi, Cheryl Corcoran

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

The diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders depends on the analysis of behavior through language by a clinical specialist. This analysis is subjective in nature and could benefit from automated, objective acoustic and linguistic processing methods. This integrated approach would convey a richer representation of patient speech, particularly for expression of emotion. In this work, we explore the potential of acoustic and prosodic metrics to infer clinical variables and predict psychosis, a condition which produces measurable derailment and tangentiality in patient language. To that purpose, we analyzed the recordings of 32 young patients at high risk of developing clinical psychosis. The subjects were evaluated using the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes/Scale of Prodromal Symptoms (SIPS/SOPS) criteria. To analyze the recordings, we examined the variation of different acoustic and prosodic metrics across time. This preliminary analysis shows that these features can infer negative symptom severity ratings (i.e., SIPS-Btotal), obtaining a Pearson correlation of 0.77 for all the subjects after cross-validated evaluation. In addition, these features can predict development of psychosis with high accuracy above 90%, outperforming classification using clinical variables only. This improved predictive power ultimately can help provide early treatment and improve quality of life for those at risk for developing psychosis.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication42nd Annual International Conferences of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society
Subtitle of host publicationEnabling Innovative Technologies for Global Healthcare, EMBC 2020
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages5575-5579
Number of pages5
ISBN (Electronic)9781728119908
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2020
Externally publishedYes
Event42nd Annual International Conferences of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2020 - Montreal, Canada
Duration: Jul 20 2020Jul 24 2020

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS
Volume2020-July
ISSN (Print)1557-170X

Conference

Conference42nd Annual International Conferences of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2020
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityMontreal
Period7/20/207/24/20

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Signal Processing
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Health Informatics

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Analyzing acoustic and prosodic fluctuations in free speech to predict psychosis onset in high-risk youths'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this