What the Heart Thinks,the Tongue Speaks: A Study on Depression and Lexical Choice

Abstract

The present study examined symptom-specificity in depression, testing the hypothesis that affective, cognitive, and somatic dimensions in depressive symptoms, as measured with the Beck Depression Inventory–II, cohere, respectively, with the use of affective-, cognitive-, and somatic-related words in natural language, as measured with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Based on questionnaire and interview data from 32 mental health outpatients, analyses indicate scores for affective depressive symptoms correlate significantly with affective word use, cognitive depressive symptoms are related to cognitively oriented word use combined with affective word use, and the presence of somatic depressive symptoms correlates significantly with words referring to physical states and functions. These results indicate that different facets of depression have specific correlates and that natural word use serves as a psychological marker. From a psychometric point of view, this study substantiates the concurrent validity of the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC2001) categories under study and the Beck Depression Inventory-II subscales for affective, cognitive, and somatic symptoms.

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