Quantifying the psychological properties of words

This thesis explores the psychological properties of words – the idea that words carry links to additional information beyond their dictionary meaning. It does so by presenting three distinct publications and an applied project, the Macroscope. The published research respectively covers: the modelling of language networks to explain lexical growth; the use of high dimensional vector representations of words to discuss language learning; and the collection of a normative dataset of single word humour ratings. The first publication outlines the use of network science in psycholinguistics. The methodology is discussed, providing clear guidelines on the application of networks when answering psychologically motivated questions. A selection of psychological studies is presented as a demonstration of use cases for networks in cognitive psychology. The second publication uses referent feature norms to represent words in a high dimensional vector space. A correlative link between referent distinctiveness and age of acquisition is proposed. The shape bias literature (the idea that children only pay attention to the shape of objects early on) is evaluated in relation to the findings. The third publication collects and shares a normative dataset of single word humour ratings. Descriptive properties of the dataset are outlined and the potential future use in the field of humour is discussed. Finally, the thesis presents the Macroscope, a collaborative project put together with Li Ying. The Macroscope is an online platform, allowing for easy analysis of the psychological properties of target words. The platform is showcased, and its full functionality is presented, including visualisation examples. Overall, the thesis aims to give researchers all that’s necessary to start working with psychological properties of words – the understanding of network science in psycholinguistics, high dimensional vector spaces, normative datasets and the applied use of all the above through the Macroscope

Humor norms for 4,997 English words

Humor ratings are provided for 4,997 English words collected from 821 participants using an online crowd-sourcing platform. Each participant rated 211 words on a scale from 1 (humorless) to 5 (humorous). To provide for comparisons across norms, words were chosen from a set common to a number of previously collected norms (e.g., arousal, valence, dominance, concreteness, age of acquisition, and reaction time). The complete dataset provides researchers with a list of humor ratings and includes information on gender, age, and educational differences. Results of analyses show that the ratings have reliability on a par with previous ratings and are not well predicted by existing norms

The macroscope : a tool for examining the historical structure of language

The recent rise in digitized historical text has made it possible to quantitatively study our psychological past. This involves understanding changes in what words meant, how words were used, and how these changes may have responded to changes in the environment, such as in healthcare, wealth disparity, and war. Here we make available a tool, the Macroscope, for studying historical changes in language over the last two centuries. The Macroscope uses over 155 billion words of historical text, which will grow as we include new historical corpora, and derives word properties from frequency-of-usage and co-occurrence patterns over time. Using co-occurrence patterns, the Macroscope can track changes in semantics, allowing researchers to identify semantically stable and unstable words in historical text and providing quantitative information about changes in a word’s valence, arousal, and concreteness, as well as information about new properties, such as semantic drift. The Macroscope provides information about both the local and global properties of words, as well as information about how these properties change over time, allowing researchers to visualize and download data in order to make inferences about historical psychology. Although quantitative historical psychology represents a largely new field of study, we see this work as complementing a wealth of other historical investigations, offering new insights and new approaches to understanding existing theory. The Macroscope is avail- able online at http://www.macroscope.tech

Nymph piss and gravy orgies : local and global contrast effects in relational humor

How does the relation between two words create humor? In this paper, we investigated the effect of global and local contrast on the humor of word pairs. We capitalized on the existence of psycholinguistic lexical norms by examining violations of expectations set up by typical patterns of English usage (global contrast) and within the local context of the words within the word pairs (local contrast). Global contrast was operationalized as lexical-semantic norms for single-words and local contrast was operationalized as the orthographic, phonological, and semantic distance between the two words in the pair. Through crowdsourced (Study 1) and best-worst (Study 2) ratings of the humor of a large set of word pairs (i.e., compounds), we find evidence of both global and local contrast on compound-word humor. Specifically, we find that humor arises when there is a violation of expectations at the local level, between the individual words that make up the word pair, even after accounting for violations at the global level relative to the entire language. Semantic variables (arousal, dominance, concreteness) were stronger predictors of word pair humor whereas form-related variables (number of letters, phonemes, letter frequency) were stronger predictors of single-word humor. Moreover, we also find that semantic dissimilarity increases humor, by defusing the impact of low-valence words—making them seem more amusing—and by enhancing the incongruence of highly imageable pairs of concrete words

Impact of COVID-19 on telepsychiatry at the service and individual patient level across two UK NHS mental health trusts

Background. The effects of COVID-19 on the shift to remote consultations remain to be properly investigated. Objective. To quantify the extent, nature and clinical impact of the use of telepsychiatry during the COVID-19 pandemic and compare it with the data in the same period of the 2 years before the outbreak. Methods. We used deidentified electronic health records routinely collected from two UK mental health Foundation Trusts (Oxford Health (OHFT) and Southern Health (SHFT)) between January and September in 2018, 2019 and 2020. We considered three outcomes: (1) service activity, (2) in-person versus remote modalities of consultation and (3) clinical outcomes using Health of the Nation Outcome Scales (HoNOS) data. HoNOS data were collected from two cohorts of patients (cohort 1: patients with ≥1 HoNOS assessment each year in 2018, 2019 and 2020; cohort 2: patients with ≥1 HoNOS assessment each year in 2019 and 2020), and analysed in clusters using superclasses (namely, psychotic, non-psychotic and organic), which are used to assess overall healthcare complexity in the National Health Service. All statistical analyses were done in Python. Findings. Mental health service activity in 2020 increased in all scheduled community appointments (by 15.4% and 5.6% in OHFT and SHFT, respectively). Remote consultations registered a 3.5-fold to 6-fold increase from February to June 2020 (from 4685 to a peak of 26 245 appointments in OHFT and from 7117 to 24 987 appointments in SHFT), with post-lockdown monthly averages of 23 030 and 22 977 remote appointments/month in OHFT and SHFT, respectively. Video consultations comprised up to one-third of total telepsychiatric services per month from April to September 2020. For patients with dementia, non-attendance rates at in-person appointments were higher than remote appointments (17.2% vs 3.9%). The overall HoNOS cluster value increased only in the organic superclass (clusters 18–21, n=174; p<0.001) from 2019 to 2020, suggesting a specific impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on this population of patients. Conclusions and clinical implications. The rapid shift to remote service delivery has not reached some groups of patients who may require more tailored management with telepsychiatry

Associated mortality risk of atypical antipsychotic medication in individuals with dementia

BACKGROUND Antipsychotic medications such as risperidone, olanzapine and aripiprazole are used to treat psychological and behavioural symptoms among dementia patients. Current evidence indicate prescription rates for antipsychotics vary and wider consensus to evaluate clinical epidemiological outcomes is limited. AIM To investigate the potential impact of atypical antipsychotics on the mortality of patients with dementia. METHODS A retrospective clinical cohort study was developed to review United Kingdom Clinical Record Interactive Search system based data between January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2017. A descriptive statistical method was used to analyse the data. Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores were used to assess the severity and stage of disease progression. A cox proportional hazards model was developed to evaluate the relationship between survival following diagnosis and other variables. RESULTS A total of 1692 patients were identified using natural language processing of which, 587 were prescribed olanzapine, quetiapine or risperidone (common group) whilst 893 (control group) were not prescribed any antipsychotics. Patients prescribed olanzapine showed an increased risk of death [hazard ratio (HR) = 1.32; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.08-1.60; P < 0.01], as did those with risperidone (HR = 1.35; 95%CI: 1.18-1.54; P < 0.001). Patients prescribed quetiapine showed no significant association (HR = 1.09; 95%CI: 0.90-1.34; P = 0.38). Factors associated with a lower risk of death were: High MMSE score at diagnosis (HR = 0.72; 95%CI: 0.62-0.83; P < 0.001), identifying as female (HR = 0.73; 95%CI: 0.64-0.82; P < 0.001), and being of a White-British ethnic group (HR = 0.82; 95%CI: 0.72-0.94; P < 0.01). CONCLUSION A significant mortality risk was identified among those prescribed olanzapine and risperidone which contradicts previous findings although the study designs used were different. Comprehensive research should be conducted to better assess clinical epidemiological outcomes associated with diagnosis and therapies to improve clinical management of these patients

Outcomes in Newly Diagnosed Atrial Fibrillation and History of Acute Coronary Syndromes: Insights from GARFIELD-AF

BACKGROUND: Many patients with atrial fibrillation have concomitant coronary artery disease with or without acute coronary syndromes and are in need of additional antithrombotic therapy. There are few data on the long-term clinical outcome of atrial fibrillation patients with a history of acute coronary syndrome. This is a 2-year study of atrial fibrillation patients with or without a history of acute coronary syndromes

Analysis of Outcomes in Ischemic vs Nonischemic Cardiomyopathy in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation A Report From the GARFIELD-AF Registry

IMPORTANCE Congestive heart failure (CHF) is commonly associated with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (AF), and their combination may affect treatment strategies and outcomes