This and that in depression: Cross-linguistic semantic effects.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Science
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Demonstratives are crucial for communication, establishing shared reference and joint attention.
• Demonstrative choice, particularly in the absence of context, may reflect emotional or experienced proximity.
• Previous research suggests links between demonstrative semantics and psychological states, including depression.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the cross-linguistic generalizability of demonstrative choice patterns related to psychological space.
• To explore whether demonstrative semantics in the Demonstrative Choice Task (DCT) can infer individual differences in depression.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Demonstrative Choice Task (DCT) across six languages: German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Chinese, and Tagalog Filipino.
• Developed DCT-based classification models to analyze demonstrative choices and semantic features.
• Compared model performance against baseline models and analyzed feature importance, particularly emotion dimensions.

Main Results:

• DCT-based models significantly outperformed baselines in most languages, showing cross-linguistic semantic patterns similar to English.
• Negative emotion dimensions were key features, with the proximal demonstrative more frequent in the depression group.
• Positive emotion effects were observed but showed more cross-linguistic variability.

Conclusions:

• Lexical choices in the DCT effectively capture semantic differences in experiential states associated with depression.
• Demonstrative language use can serve as a tool to map individuals within a multidimensional semantic space.
• Findings offer novel insights into individual differences in depressive states and their etiology.