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Prosodische spraakkenmerken van oudere mensen met depressieve klachten : verandering van positieve en negatieve emoties en prosodie binnen een life-review therapie sessie

Hülsmann, M. (2015) Prosodische spraakkenmerken van oudere mensen met depressieve klachten : verandering van positieve en negatieve emoties en prosodie binnen een life-review therapie sessie.

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Abstract:Introduction: This research deals with a life-review therapy session, “dierbare herinneringen“ intervention, where elderly people with depressive disorders have to build a new self-perception. Prior research has shown that there are differences in pitch and speech silence from people with depressive disorders. The goal of this study was to look for a change within a session. It was analyzed if there is a correlation between the two speech features and verbal expression of positive and negative emotions or how they change over time. If found, such a correlation could possibly be used as an indicator of depression and maybe prevent this or alleviate the symptoms. Methods: To look for these correlations, audio data from participants from the dierbare herinneringen intervention were analyzed. This analysis is done with aid of the program Praat, which retrieves de pitch and speech silences. These are then analyzed for changes during the session. The same is done for verbal expressions of positive and negative emotions, which are retrieved from the LIWC program. After that de speech features got correlated with emotions. Results: Here was no significant correlation found. There seems to be no relationship between pitch and speech silence length and verbal expressions of positive and negative emotions. Similarly were there no noticeable changes in these during the session, except relatively more positive than negative verbal expressions of emotions in the whole session. Discussion: The expectation was to find more positive expressions of emotions because that was the goal of the intervention. To some degree this was found in the results, but the depression scores of the participant did not change. This could explain why this study did not find significant correlations. Future research should focus on patients where depression scores did change after the intervention.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology BSc (56604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/66973
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