title: Phonetic measures of reduced tongue movement correlate with negative symptom severity in hospitalized patients with first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.
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).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  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.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Artificial Intelligence, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States.
authors.forename: Michael A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Covington
authors.forename: S L Anya
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Lunden
authors.forename: Sarah L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Cristofaro
authors.forename: Claire Ramsay
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Wan
authors.forename: C Thomas
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Bailey
authors.forename: Beth
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Broussard
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fogarty
authors.forename: Stephanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Shayi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Michael T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Compton
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009069:Movement Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology / Q000473:pathology; D010700:Phonetics; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D014059:Tongue / Q000503:physiopathology*; D014741:Video Recording; D055815:Young Adult