scholarly journals Revealing semantic and emotional structure of suicide notes with cognitive network science

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreia Sofia Teixeira ◽  
Szymon Talaga ◽  
Trevor James Swanson ◽  
Massimo Stella
Keyword(s):  
Suicidal Ideation ◽  
Network Science ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Null Model ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Cognitive Network ◽  
Cognitive States ◽  
Suicide Notes ◽  
Scientific Challenge

AbstractUnderstanding how people who commit suicide perceive their cognitive states and emotions represents an important open scientific challenge. We build upon cognitive network science, psycholinguistics and semantic frame theory to introduce a network representation of suicidal ideation as expressed in multiple suicide notes. By reconstructing the knowledge structure of such notes, we reveal interconnections between the ideas and emotional states of people who committed suicide through an analysis of emotional balance motivated by structural balance theory, semantic prominence and emotional profiling. Our results indicate that connections between positively- and negatively-valenced terms give rise to a degree of balance that is significantly higher than in a null model where the affective structure is randomized and in a linguistic baseline model capturing mind-wandering in absence of suicidal ideation. We show that suicide notes are affectively compartmentalized such that positive concepts tend to cluster together and dominate the overall network structure. Notably, this positive clustering diverges from perceptions of self, which are found to be dominated by negative, sad conceptual associations in analyses based on subject-verb-object relationships and emotional profiling. A key positive concept is “love”, which integrates information relating the self to others and is semantically prominent across suicide notes. The emotions constituting the semantic frame of “love” combine joy and trust with anticipation and sadness, which can be linked to psychological theories of meaning-making as well as narrative psychology. Our results open new ways for understanding the structure of genuine suicide notes and may be used to inform future research on suicide prevention.

scholarly journals Cognitive network science as a framework for detecting structural patterns and emotions in suicide letters

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Stella ◽  
Trevor Swanson ◽  
Ying Li ◽  
Thomas Hills ◽  
Sofia A. Teixeira
Keyword(s):  
Network Science ◽  
Balance Theory ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Healthy Individuals ◽  
Cognitive Network ◽  
Suicide Notes ◽  
Negative Context ◽  
Entropy Measures ◽  
Complex Relationships

Communicating one's mindset means transmitting complex relationships between concepts and emotions. Using cognitive network science, we reconstruct the mindset around suicide as communicated in 139 genuine suicide notes. Despite their negative context, suicide notes are surprisingly positively valenced and their ending statements are markedly more emotional, i.e. elicit deeper fear/sadness but also stronger joy/trust and anticipation, than their main body. By using emotional states from the Emotional Recall Task, we "open the lid" of suicidal narratives and compare their emotional backbone against emotion recall in mentally healthy individuals. Supported by psychological literature, we introduce emotional complexity as an affective analogue of structural balance theory, measuring how elementary cycles (closed triads) of emotion co-occurrences mix positive, negative and neutral states in narratives and recollections. Both authors of suicide notes and healthy individuals exhibit less complexity and more emotional coherence than expected by chance. However, suicide narratives display higher complexity, i.e. a lower level of coherently valenced triads, than healthy individuals recalling the same states. Entropy measures identified a similar tendency for suicide letters to shift more frequently between contrasting emotional states. Our results demonstrate that suicide notes possess highly contrastive narratives of emotions, more complex than expected by null models and healthy populations.

scholarly journals Cognitive Network Science Reconstructs How Experts, News Outlets and Social Media Perceived the COVID-19 Pandemic

Systems ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 38
Author(s):  
Massimo Stella
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
News Media ◽  
Network Science ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Cognitive Network ◽  
Public Speech ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Semantic Associations

This work uses cognitive network science to reconstruct how experts, influential news outlets and social media perceived and reported the news “COVID-19 is a pandemic”. In an exploratory corpus of 1 public speech, 10 influential news media articles on the same news and 37,500 trending tweets, the same pandemic declaration elicited a wide spectrum of perceptions retrieved by automatic language processing. While the WHO adopted a narrative strategy of mitigating the pandemic by raising public concern, some news media promoted fear for economic repercussions, while others channelled trust in contagion containment through semantic associations with science. In Italy, the first country to adopt a nationwide lockdown, social discourse perceived the pandemic with anger and fear, emotions of grief elaboration, but also with trust, a useful mechanism for coping with threats. Whereas news mostly elicited individual emotions, social media promoted much richer perceptions, where negative and positive emotional states coexisted, and where trust mainly originated from politics-related jargon rather than from science. This indicates that social media linked the pandemics to institutions and their intervention policies. Since both trust and fear strongly influence people’s risk-averse behaviour and mental/physical wellbeing, identifying evidence for these emotions is key under a global health crisis. Cognitive network science opens the way to unveiling the emotional framings of massively read news in automatic ways, with relevance for better understanding how information was framed and perceived by large audiences.

scholarly journals Cognitive network science reconstructs how experts, news outlets and social media perceived the COVID-19 pandemic

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Stella
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
News Media ◽  
Network Science ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Cognitive Network ◽  
Public Speech ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Semantic Associations

This work uses cognitive network science to reconstruct how experts, influential news outlets and social media perceived and reported the news “COVID-19 is a pandemic”. In an exploratory corpus of 1 public speech, 10 influential news media articles on the same news and 37,500 trending tweets, the same pandemic declaration elicited a wide spectrum of perceptions retrieved by automatic language processing. While the WHO adopted a narrative strategy of mitigating the pandemic by raising public concern, some news media promoted fear for economic repercussions while others channelled trust in contagion containment through semantic associations with science (e.g. “flatten the curve”), a strategy found also in other studies. In Italy, the first country to adopt nationwide lockdown, social discourse perceived the pandemic with anger and fear, emotions of grief elaboration, but also with trust, a useful mechanism for coping with threats. Whereas news mostly elicited individual emotions, social media promoted much richer perceptions, where negative and positive emotional states coexisted, but also where trust mainly originated from politics-related jargon rather than from science. This indicates that social media linked the pandemics to institutions and their intervention policies. The above emotions strongly influence people’s risk-averse behaviour and mental/physical wellbeing, as reviewed here in view of recent work about COVID-19. Cognitive network science opens the way to unveiling and understanding emotional framings and perceptions of news, with relevance for better understanding information flow during a global health crisis with little human coding.

Attachment Organization in Suicide Prevention Research

Crisis ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Venta ◽  
Carla Sharp
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Suicidal Ideation ◽  
Suicide Attempt ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Suicide Ideation ◽  
Suicide Attempts ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Self Harm

Background: Identifying risk factors for suicide-related thoughts and behaviors (SRTB) is essential among adolescents in whom SRTB remain a leading cause of death. Although many risk factors have already been identified, influential theories now suggest that the domain of interpersonal relationships may play a critical role in the emergence of SRTB. Because attachment has long been seen as the foundation of interpersonal functioning, we suggest that attachment insecurity warrants attention as a risk factor for SRTB. Aims: This study sought to explore relations between attachment organization and suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and self-harm in an inpatient adolescent sample, controlling for demographic and psychopathological covariates. Method: We recruited 194 adolescents from an inpatient unit and assigned them to one of four attachment groups (secure, preoccupied, dismissing, or disorganized attachment). Interview and self-report measures were used to create four variables reflecting the presence or absence of suicidal ideation in the last year, single lifetime suicide attempt, multiple lifetime suicide attempts, and lifetime self-harm. Results: Chi-square and regression analyses did not reveal significant relations between attachment organization and SRTB, although findings did confirm previously established relations between psychopathology and SRTB, such that internalizing disorder was associated with increased self-harm, suicide ideation, and suicide attempt and externalizing disorder was associated with increased self-harm. Conclusion: The severity of this sample and methodological differences from previous studies may explain the nonsignificant findings. Nonsignificant findings may indicate that the relation between attachment organization and SRTB is moderated by other factors that should be explored in future research.

747 Suicidal Ideation Associated with Cognitive Hyperarousal, Rumination and Insomnia in Depressed Perinatal Women

SLEEP ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (Supplement_2) ◽  
pp. A291-A292
Author(s):  
Lily Arnett ◽  
David Kalmbach ◽  
Brian Ahmedani ◽  
Bizu Gelaye ◽  
Christopher Drake ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Suicidal Ideation ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Late Pregnancy ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Blood Institute ◽  
Cognitive Arousal ◽  
Early Postpartum ◽  
National Heart Lung ◽  
Perseverative Thinking ◽  
Perinatal Women

Abstract Introduction This prospective study explored associations among clinical insomnia, nocturnal cognitive hyperarousal, and nocturnal perinatal-focused rumination with suicidal ideation (SI) in perinatal women with mild-to-moderate depression. Methods From late pregnancy through early postpartum, 39 women with depression completed 17 weekly surveys assessing insomnia, depression, suicidal ideation, perceived stress, and three cognitive arousal indices. Results Women with nocturnal cognitive hyperarousal at baseline, relative to those with low nocturnal cognitive arousal, were at greater risk for developing new onset SI in late pregnancy or early postpartum (33% vs 1%). Moreover, nocturnal perinatal-focused rumination was independently associated with SI. SI-risk was highest when women reported clinical insomnia combined with nocturnal cognitive hyperarousal (OR=5.66, p=.037) or perinatal-focused rumination (OR=11.63, p=.018). Daytime perseverative thinking was not uniquely associated with SI. Conclusion Cognitive hyperarousal and perinatal-focused rumination at night are uniquely associated with SI among perinatal women with depression. Moreover, insomnia augments the suicidogenicity of nighttime cognitive activity. Future research should determine whether alleviating nocturnal cognitive arousal, pregnancy- and fetal/infant-related concerns, and insomnia with psychotherapy reduces SI for women with perinatal depression. Support (if any) This study was funded by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (198-FP-18, PI: Kalmbach). Dr. Cheng’s effort was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (K23-HL13866, PI: Cheng).

A sociosemiotic interpretation of cultural heritage in UNESCO legal instruments: a corpus-based study

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwen Bouvier ◽  
Zhonghua Wu
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Negotiation ◽  
Heritage Studies ◽  
Securitization Theory ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
International Instruments

Abstract The past few decades have seen a plethora of interest in heritage studies in international law, as the legitimization of cultural heritage is a significant aspect of protecting the legacy of humanity’s collective memory, which is fully reflected in a series of international instruments on culture. This paper examines the meaning-making process of UNESCO legal documents on cultural heritage from a sociosemiotic perspective. The data for the corpus-based study were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively by applying the securitization theory to heritage studies. Research findings reveal three significant shifts in cultural heritage, i.e., from property to heritage, from tangible to intangible, and from material-centered to human-centered, which embodies the harmonious coexistence of humanity and nature, a philosophical idea embedded in traditional Chinese culture. As noted, terms targeting cultural heritage in UNESCO international instruments are the sign vehicle, generally mediated and shaped by social values, cultural beliefs, and conventional wisdom, etc. as a part of the interpretant, making different categories of heritage meaningful and interpretable. Characterized by temporality and spatiality, cultural heritage is subject to multiple interpretations. The meaning-making of international instruments for consideration is a sociosemiotic operation that can be construed through contextual factors and a process of social negotiation. This paper argues that a sociosemiotic approach to heritage studies is conducive to explicating the construction and deconstruction of heritage as discursive practices while offering some implications for future research.

scholarly journals Sentiment Analysis of Suicide Notes: A Shared Task

2012 ◽  
Vol 5s1 ◽  
pp. BII.S9042 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. Pestian ◽  
Pawel Matykiewicz ◽  
Michelle Linn-Gust ◽  
Brett South ◽  
Ozlem Uzuner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Preliminary Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Large Set ◽  
Biomedical Domain ◽  
Shared Task ◽  
Clinical Text ◽  
Evaluation Measures ◽  
Suicide Notes ◽  
Data Production

This paper reports on a shared task involving the assignment of emotions to suicide notes. Two features distinguished this task from previous shared tasks in the biomedical domain. One is that it resulted in the corpus of fully anonymized clinical text and annotated suicide notes. This resource is permanently available and will (we hope) facilitate future research. The other key feature of the task is that it required categorization with respect to a large set of labels. The number of participants was larger than in any previous biomedical challenge task. We describe the data production process and the evaluation measures, and give a preliminary analysis of the results. Many systems performed at levels approaching the inter-coder agreement, suggesting that human-like performance on this task is within the reach of currently available technologies.

scholarly journals Cognitive Network Neuroscience

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (8) ◽  
pp. 1471-1491 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Medaglia ◽  
Mary-Ellen Lynall ◽  
Danielle S. Bassett
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Network Science ◽  
Structural Connectivity ◽  
Cognitive Network ◽  
Network Characteristics ◽  
Time Dynamics ◽  
Neuroimaging Data ◽  
Control Learning ◽  
And Function ◽  
Network Neuroscience

Network science provides theoretical, computational, and empirical tools that can be used to understand the structure and function of the human brain in novel ways using simple concepts and mathematical representations. Network neuroscience is a rapidly growing field that is providing considerable insight into human structural connectivity, functional connectivity while at rest, changes in functional networks over time (dynamics), and how these properties differ in clinical populations. In addition, a number of studies have begun to quantify network characteristics in a variety of cognitive processes and provide a context for understanding cognition from a network perspective. In this review, we outline the contributions of network science to cognitive neuroscience. We describe the methodology of network science as applied to the particular case of neuroimaging data and review its uses in investigating a range of cognitive functions including sensory processing, language, emotion, attention, cognitive control, learning, and memory. In conclusion, we discuss current frontiers and the specific challenges that must be overcome to integrate these complementary disciplines of network science and cognitive neuroscience. Increased communication between cognitive neuroscientists and network scientists could lead to significant discoveries under an emerging scientific intersection known as cognitive network neuroscience.

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