What Words Can Tell Us: If Natural Language Reflects Generalized Anxiety Symptoms in Adults with Different Ages

The main means of anxiety screening and treatment-monitoring are self-report rating scales, which enforce a choice and often overlook nuances. This study investigated the relationship between self-reported anxiety levels, as measured by the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), and anxiety-related linguistic features in answers to open-ended questions, namely first-person singular pronouns, negations, and negative emotion, anxiety, anger and sadness words. The research questions were whether these linguistic features predict GAD-7 scores, whether younger adults use these linguistic features more and whether the prediction of GAD-7 scores is stronger in younger adults. Participants (N =136) were surveyed on the GAD-7 and open-ended questions on topics such as mental health and recent life-events. Responses were quantified using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text analysis program and analyzed with multiple linear regressions. Results revealed that the linguistic...Show moreThe main means of anxiety screening and treatment-monitoring are self-report rating scales, which enforce a choice and often overlook nuances. This study investigated the relationship between self-reported anxiety levels, as measured by the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), and anxiety-related linguistic features in answers to open-ended questions, namely first-person singular pronouns, negations, and negative emotion, anxiety, anger and sadness words. The research questions were whether these linguistic features predict GAD-7 scores, whether younger adults use these linguistic features more and whether the prediction of GAD-7 scores is stronger in younger adults. Participants (N =136) were surveyed on the GAD-7 and open-ended questions on topics such as mental health and recent life-events. Responses were quantified using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text analysis program and analyzed with multiple linear regressions. Results revealed that the linguistic features combined predicted GAD-7 scores, but individual linguistic features did not. Younger adults used more first-person singular pronouns and anxiety words. There was no age-related difference in the correlation between linguistic features and GAD-7 scores. Findings cautiously suggest that linguistic analysis with multiple linguistic features combined can predict generalized anxiety symptoms for adults, possibly without needing to adjust for age related differences in language use. This implicates that quantitative language-based assessments have potential to screen for and monitor symptom severity of generalized anxiety, possibly without accounting for age-related differences in language. Limitations include the non-clinical sample, which mainly consisted of younger adults, and the fixed word categories of the LIWC. Suggestions for future research are discussed.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

What Words Can Tell Us: If Natural Language Reflects Generalized Anxiety Symptoms in Adults with Different Ages