Text-Based Detection of the Risk of Depression

This study examines the relationship between language use and psychological characteristics of the communicator. The aim of the study was to find models predicting the depressivity of the writer based on the computational linguistic markers of his/her written text. Respondents’ linguistic fingerprints were traced in four texts of different genres. Depressivity was measured using the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21). The research sample (N = 172, 83 men, 89 women) was created by quota sampling an adult Czech population. Morphological variables of the texts showing differences (M-W test) between the non-depressive and depressive groups were incorporated into predictive models. Results: Across all participants, the data best fit predictive models of depressivity using morphological characteristics from the informal text “letter from holidays” (Nagelkerke r2 = 0.526 for men and 0.670 for women). For men, models for the formal texts “cover letter” and “complaint” showed moderate fit with the data (r2 = 0.479 and 0.435). The constructed models show weak to substantial recall (0.235 – 0.800) and moderate to substantial precision (0.571 – 0.889). Morphological variables appearing in the final models vary. There are no key morphological characteristics suitable for all models or for all genres. The resulting models’ properties demonstrate that they should be suitable for screening individuals at risk of depression and the most suitable genre is informal text (“letter from holidays”)

Talent and Creativity in Preschool Age Children: A Pilot Study

This paper analyses the relationship between giftedness and two types of creativity (figural and verbal) in preschool age children. The paper aims to describe and analyze the relationship between the two types of creativity, their relationship to the overall level of giftedness, and to explore the predictive model for the overall level of giftedness as a dependent variable. The overall level of giftedness was measured with the Characteristics of giftedness scale, verbal creativity was measured with a test of verbal creativity known as Telling of stories, and figural creativity was measured with Urban’s Test for creative thinking. The research data was gathered through testing 32 randomly selected children of preschool age. The results suggest that there is a moderate level of correlation between the two types of creativity (which is statistically significant) and a statistically non-significant weak correlation between creativity and giftedness (verbal creativity r=0.361; figural creativity r=0.222). As for partial characteristics, the fact that a child gives imaginary names to imaginary animals has the closest relationship with the overall level of giftedness. The same applies to a child’s ability to conceive an unfinished drawing as a conceptually whole drawing. These two elements are also most strongly represented in the included predictive model. The paper also describes that the overall level of giftedness in preschool age children has weak correlation with the achieved education of their fathers (r=0.248) and instead posits a correlation with the achieved education of their mothers (r=0.363).The paper also discusses limits of the presented research and directions for further research