A framework for applying natural language processing in digital health interventions

BACKGROUND: Digital health interventions (DHIs) are poised to reduce target symptoms in a scalable, affordable, and empirically supported way. DHIs that involve coaching or clinical support often collect text data from 2 sources: (1) open correspondence between users and the trained practitioners supporting them through a messaging system and (2) text data recorded during the intervention by users, such as diary entries. Natural language processing (NLP) offers methods for analyzing text, augmenting the understanding of intervention effects, and informing therapeutic decision making. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to present a technical framework that supports the automated analysis of both types of text data often present in DHIs. This framework generates text features and helps to build statistical models to predict target variables, including user engagement, symptom change, and therapeutic outcomes. METHODS: We first discussed various NLP techniques and demonstrated how they are implemented in the presented framework. We then applied the framework in a case study of the Healthy Body Image Program, a Web-based intervention trial for eating disorders (EDs). A total of 372 participants who screened positive for an ED received a DHI aimed at reducing ED psychopathology (including binge eating and purging behaviors) and improving body image. These users generated 37,228 intervention text snippets and exchanged 4285 user-coach messages, which were analyzed using the proposed model. RESULTS: We applied the framework to predict binge eating behavior, resulting in an area under the curve between 0.57 (when applied to new users) and 0.72 (when applied to new symptom reports of known users). In addition, initial evidence indicated that specific text features predicted the therapeutic outcome of reducing ED symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: The case study demonstrates the usefulness of a structured approach to text data analytics. NLP techniques improve the prediction of symptom changes in DHIs. We present a technical framework that can be easily applied in other clinical trials and clinical presentations and encourage other groups to apply the framework in similar contexts

Introduction to the Special Section on Computational Modeling and Understanding of Emotions in Conflictual Social Interactions

The editorial work of C. Clavel for this special issue was partially supported by a grant overseen by the French National Research Agency (ANR17-MAOI) and by the European project H2020 ANIMATAS (MSCA-ITN-ETN 7659552). The editorial work of V. Patti was partially funded by Progetto di Ateneo/CSP 2016 (Immigrants, Hate and Prejudice in Social Media, S1618_L2_BOSC_01). P. Rosso was partially funded by Spanish MICINN under the research project MISMIS-FAKEnHATE on MISinformation and MIScommunication in social media: FAKE news and HATE speech (PGC2018-096212-B-C31).Damiano, R.; Patti, V.; Clavel, C.; Rosso, P. (2020). Introduction to the Special Section on Computational Modeling and Understanding of Emotions in Conflictual Social Interactions. ACM Transactions on Internet Technology. 20(2):1-5. https://doi.org/10.1145/3392334S15202Basile, V., Bosco, C., Fersini, E., Nozza, D., Patti, V., Rangel Pardo, F. M., … Sanguinetti, M. (2019). SemEval-2019 Task 5: Multilingual Detection of Hate Speech Against Immigrants and Women in Twitter. Proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation. doi:10.18653/v1/s19-2007Bassignana, E., Basile, V., & Patti, V. (2018). Hurtlex: A Multilingual Lexicon of Words to Hurt. Proceedings of the Fifth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics CLiC-it 2018, 51-56. doi:10.4000/books.aaccademia.3085Cristina Bosco Felice Dell’Orletta Fabio Poletto Manuela Sanguinetti and Maurizio Tesconi. 2018. Overview of the EVALITA 2018 hate speech detection task. In Proceedings of the 6th Evaluation Campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. Final Workshop (EVALITA’18) co-located with the 5th Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it’18). 9. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2263/paper010.pdf Cristina Bosco Felice Dell’Orletta Fabio Poletto Manuela Sanguinetti and Maurizio Tesconi. 2018. Overview of the EVALITA 2018 hate speech detection task. In Proceedings of the 6th Evaluation Campaign of Natural Language Processing and Speech Tools for Italian. Final Workshop (EVALITA’18) co-located with the 5th Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it’18). 9. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2263/paper010.pdfBrady, W. J., Wills, J. A., Jost, J. T., Tucker, J. A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2017). Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(28), 7313-7318. doi:10.1073/pnas.1618923114Fortuna, P., & Nunes, S. (2018). A Survey on Automatic Detection of Hate Speech in Text. ACM Computing Surveys, 51(4), 1-30. doi:10.1145/3232676Pamungkas, E. W., & Patti, V. (2019). Cross-domain and Cross-lingual Abusive Language Detection: A Hybrid Approach with Deep Learning and a Multilingual Lexicon. Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Student Research Workshop. doi:10.18653/v1/p19-2051Plutchik, R. (2001). The Nature of Emotions. American Scientist, 89(4), 344. doi:10.1511/2001.4.344Schmidt, A., & Wiegand, M. (2017). A Survey on Hate Speech Detection using Natural Language Processing. Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Social Media. doi:10.18653/v1/w17-1101W. Wilmot and J. Hocker. 2013. Interpersonal Conflict (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill New York NY. W. Wilmot and J. Hocker. 2013. Interpersonal Conflict (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill New York NY

Outline of a new approach to the nature of mind

I propose a new approach to the constitutive problem of psychology ‘what is mind?’ The first section introduces modifications of the received scope, methodology, and evaluation criteria of unified theories of cognition in accordance with the requirements of evolutionary compatibility and of a mature science. The second section outlines the proposed theory. Its first part provides empirically verifiable conditions delineating the class of meaningful neural formations and modifies accordingly the traditional conceptions of meaning, concept and thinking. This analysis is part of a theory of communication in terms of inter-level systems of primitives that proposes the communication-understanding principle as a psychological invariance. It unifies a substantial amount of research by systematizing the notions of meaning, thinking, concept, belief, communication, and understanding and leads to a minimum vocabulary for this core system of mental phenomena. Its second part argues that written human language is the key characteristic of the artificially natural human mind. Overall, the theory both supports Darwin’s continuity hypothesis and proposes that the mental gap is within our own species

Sequential Dialogue Context Modeling for Spoken Language Understanding

Spoken Language Understanding (SLU) is a key component of goal oriented dialogue systems that would parse user utterances into semantic frame representations. Traditionally SLU does not utilize the dialogue history beyond the previous system turn and contextual ambiguities are resolved by the downstream components. In this paper, we explore novel approaches for modeling dialogue context in a recurrent neural network (RNN) based language understanding system. We propose the Sequential Dialogue Encoder Network, that allows encoding context from the dialogue history in chronological order. We compare the performance of our proposed architecture with two context models, one that uses just the previous turn context and another that encodes dialogue context in a memory network, but loses the order of utterances in the dialogue history. Experiments with a multi-domain dialogue dataset demonstrate that the proposed architecture results in reduced semantic frame error rates.Comment: 8 + 2 pages, Updated 10/17: Updated typos in abstract, Updated 07/07: Updated Title, abstract and few minor change

Natural Language Understanding: Methodological Conceptualization

This article contains the results of a theoretical analysis of the phenomenon of natural language understanding (NLU), as a methodological problem. The combination of structural-ontological and informational-psychological approaches provided an opportunity to describe the subject matter field of NLU, as a composite function of the mind, which systemically combines the verbal and discursive structural layers. In particular, the idea of NLU is presented, on the one hand, as the relation between the discourse of a specific speech message and the meta-discourse of a language, in turn, activated by the need-motivational factors. On the other hand, it is conceptualized as a process with a specific structure of information metabolism, the study of which implies the necessity to differentiate the affective (emotional) and need-motivational influences on the NLU, as well as to take into account their interaction. At the same time, the hypothesis about the influence of needs on NLU under the scenario similar to the pattern of Yerkes-Dodson is argued. And the theoretical conclusion that emotions fulfill the function of the operator of the structural features of the information metabolism of NLU is substantiated. Thus, depending on the modality of emotions in the process of NLU, it was proposed to distinguish two scenarios for the implementation of information metabolism - reduction and synthetic. The argument in favor of the conclusion about the productive and constitutive role of emotions in the process of NLU is also given

Learning by Seeing by Doing: Arithmetic Word Problems

Learning by doing in pursuit of real-world goals has received much attention from education researchers but has been unevenly supported by mathematics education software at the elementary level, particularly as it involves arithmetic word problems. In this article, we give examples of doing-oriented tools that might promote children\u27s ability to see significant abstract structures in mathematical situations. The reflection necessary for such seeing is motivated by activities and contexts that emphasize affective and social aspects. Natural language, as a representation already familiar to children, is key in these activities, both as a means of mathematical expression and as a link between situations and various abstract representations. These tools support children\u27s ownership of a mathematical problem and its expression; remote sharing of problems and data; software interpretation of children\u27s own word problems; play with dynamically linked representations with attention to children\u27s prior connections; and systematic problem variation based on empirically determined level of difficulty

Neurocognitive Informatics Manifesto.

Informatics studies all aspects of the structure of natural and artificial information systems. Theoretical and abstract approaches to information have made great advances, but human information processing is still unmatched in many areas, including information management, representation and understanding. Neurocognitive informatics is a new, emerging field that should help to improve the matching of artificial and natural systems, and inspire better computational algorithms to solve problems that are still beyond the reach of machines. In this position paper examples of neurocognitive inspirations and promising directions in this area are given

From ends to causes (and back again) by metaphor: the paradox of natural selection

Natural selection is one of the most famous metaphors in the history of science. Charles Darwin used the metaphor and the underlying analogy to frame his ideas about evolution and its main driving mechanism into a full-fledged theory. Because the metaphor turned out to be such a powerful epistemic tool, Darwin naturally assumed that he could also employ it as an educational tool to inform his contemporaries about his findings. Moreover, by using the metaphor Darwin was able to bring his theory in accordance with both the dominant philosophy of science in his time and the respected tradition of natural theology. However, as he introduced his theory of evolution by natural selection in On the origin of species in 1859, the metaphor also turned out to have a serious downside. Because of its intentional overtones, his contemporaries systematically misunderstood his metaphor not as a natural mechanism causing evolution to occur but as an agent who works towards particular ends. The difference in success between natural selection as an epistemic tool and its failure as an educational tool is labelled as a paradox. We explain the paradox from a cognitive perspective and discuss the implications for teaching evolution

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AS A METHODOLOGICAL PARADIGM

A general direction in which cognitive linguistics is heading at the turn of the century is outlined and a revised understanding of cognitive linguistics as a methodological paradigm is suggest. The goal of cognitive linguistics is defined as understanding what language is and what language does to ensure the predominance of homo sapiens as a biological species. This makes cognitive linguistics a biologically oriented empirical science

Theories of Reference: What Was the Question?

The new theory of reference has won popularity. However, a number of noted philosophers have also attempted to reply to the critical arguments of Kripke and others, and aimed to vindicate the description theory of reference. Such responses are often based on ingenious novel kinds of descriptions, such as rigidified descriptions, causal descriptions, and metalinguistic descriptions. This prolonged debate raises the doubt whether different parties really have any shared understanding of what the central question of the philosophical theory of reference is: what is the main question to which descriptivism and the causal-historical theory have presented competing answers. One aim of the paper is to clarify this issue. The most influential objections to the new theory of reference are critically reviewed. Special attention is also paid to certain important later advances in the new theory of reference, due to Devitt and others