Teferra Bazen Gashaw, Borwein Sophie, DeSouza Danielle D, Simpson William, Rheault Ludovic, Rose Jonathan
The Edward S Rogers Sr Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
School of Public Policy, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
JMIR Ment Health. 2022 Jul 8;9(7):e36828. doi: 10.2196/36828.
The measurement and monitoring of generalized anxiety disorder requires frequent interaction with psychiatrists or psychologists. Access to mental health professionals is often difficult because of high costs or insufficient availability. The ability to assess generalized anxiety disorder passively and at frequent intervals could be a useful complement to conventional treatment and help with relapse monitoring. Prior work suggests that higher anxiety levels are associated with features of human speech. As such, monitoring speech using personal smartphones or other wearable devices may be a means to achieve passive anxiety monitoring.
This study aims to validate the association of previously suggested acoustic and linguistic features of speech with anxiety severity.
A large number of participants (n=2000) were recruited and participated in a single web-based study session. Participants completed the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale assessment and provided an impromptu speech sample in response to a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test. Acoustic and linguistic speech features were a priori selected based on the existing speech and anxiety literature, along with related features. Associations between speech features and anxiety levels were assessed using age and personal income as covariates.
Word count and speaking duration were negatively correlated with anxiety scores (r=-0.12; P<.001), indicating that participants with higher anxiety scores spoke less. Several acoustic features were also significantly (P<.05) associated with anxiety, including the mel-frequency cepstral coefficients, linear prediction cepstral coefficients, shimmer, fundamental frequency, and first formant. In contrast to previous literature, second and third formant, jitter, and zero crossing rate for the z score of the power spectral density acoustic features were not significantly associated with anxiety. Linguistic features, including negative-emotion words, were also associated with anxiety (r=0.10; P<.001). In addition, some linguistic relationships were sex dependent. For example, the count of words related to power was positively associated with anxiety in women (r=0.07; P=.03), whereas it was negatively associated with anxiety in men (r=-0.09; P=.01).
Both acoustic and linguistic speech measures are associated with anxiety scores. The amount of speech, acoustic quality of speech, and gender-specific linguistic characteristics of speech may be useful as part of a system to screen for anxiety, detect relapse, or monitor treatment.
广泛性焦虑症的测量与监测需要频繁与精神科医生或心理学家进行互动。由于成本高昂或可及性不足，获得心理健康专业人员的帮助往往很困难。能够被动且频繁地评估广泛性焦虑症可能是对传统治疗的有益补充，并有助于复发监测。先前的研究表明，较高的焦虑水平与人类言语特征相关。因此，使用个人智能手机或其他可穿戴设备监测言语可能是实现被动焦虑监测的一种手段。
本研究旨在验证先前提出的言语声学和语言特征与焦虑严重程度之间的关联。
招募了大量参与者（n = 2000），并让他们参加一次基于网络的研究。参与者完成了广泛性焦虑症7项量表评估，并针对改良版的特里尔社会应激测试提供了一段即席言语样本。基于现有的言语和焦虑文献以及相关特征，预先选择了声学和语言言语特征。使用年龄和个人收入作为协变量评估言语特征与焦虑水平之间的关联。
单词数量和说话时长与焦虑得分呈负相关（r = -0.12；P <.001），表明焦虑得分较高的参与者说话较少。一些声学特征也与焦虑显著相关（P <.05），包括梅尔频率倒谱系数、线性预测倒谱系数、谐波音、基频和第一共振峰。与先前文献不同的是，功率谱密度声学特征的z分数的第二和第三共振峰、抖动和过零率与焦虑无显著关联。语言特征，包括负性情绪词汇，也与焦虑相关（r = 0.10；P <.001）。此外，一些语言关系存在性别差异。例如，与权力相关的词汇数量在女性中与焦虑呈正相关（r = 0.07；P =.03），而在男性中与焦虑呈负相关（r = -0.09；P =.01）。
言语的声学和语言测量均与焦虑得分相关。言语量、言语声学质量以及言语的性别特异性语言特征可能作为筛查焦虑、检测复发或监测治疗系统的一部分而发挥作用。
