Grammatical Pattern Recognition For Patients Suffering From Formal Thought Disorder

First the de-identified transcripts are edited to remove punctuation markers and to add time stamps to the text. Then we translate words of text into appropriate tags POS (parts of speech) and use them to generate n-grams (with n=2, 3, 4, 5). Then, using computational techniques we cluster the results and obtain the frequencies of different syntax patterns. Our preliminary results suggest that perseveration – whether repetitive stuttering or progressive sentence formation – translate into uncommon syntax patterns. In a pilot study on formal thought disorder, our preliminary results show that between a third and a half of examples of perseveration involve the use of the first person pronoun. This data corresponds with the hypotheses found in the psychoanalytic theories of both Lacan and Bollas that psychotic events involve difficulties in the narration of self. We confirmed Covington et al.’s (2005) results on frequency of different language events, with perseveration and loose associations being more common than phrasal neologisms and direct reference to hallucinations, that were in turn more common than examples of illogicality or grammatical anomalies.