Verbal Behavior Research Articles

A Ten-Year Systematic Review on Linguistic BehaviorsOral and Written Communication as Predictors of Anxiety

The purpose of this article is to conduct a systematic review of the literature over the past decade on the relationship between linguistic behavior and anxiety-related mental disorders. Anxiety is a universal and complex mental health problem with significant societal implications, and it has been one of the focuses of extensive attention, investigation and research in the psychological community. Many psychiatric disorders, especially anxiety disorders, are associated with severe anxiety. In recent years, as more and more scholars began to focus on the link between verbal behavior and anxiety, certain unique linguistic features have been identified in people with anxiety disorders, such as using less positive emotional words and fewer long sentences. However, some issues remain to be addressed. For instance, the majority of studies conducted in this field have not employed long-term observational experimental designs, which has hindered researchers from exploring the deeper effects of language behavior on the onset and development of anxiety symptoms. Additionally, in-depth research is challenging because some studies focus on specific populations, have limited sample selection, and rarely make cross-cultural comparisons. Anxiety disorders associated with decreasing quality of life and impairing social functioning. Therefore, it is crucial to study the relationship between anxiety and linguistic behavior from practical perspective. Future research should focus on solving the limitations of existing studies, exploring the mechanism of linguistic behavior's influence on anxiety symptoms, and exploring the relationship between anxiety and language in different cultures, to provide more effective strategies for the diagnosis and treatment of anxiety disorders.

Similar gaze behaviour during dialogue perception in congenitally deaf children with cochlear Implants and normal hearing children.

Perceptual and speech production abilities of children with cochlear implants (CIs) are usually tested by word and sentence repetition or naming tests. However, these tests are quite far apart from daily life linguistic contexts. Here, we describe a way of investigating the link between language comprehension and anticipatory verbal behaviour promoting the use of more complex listening situations. The setup consists in watching the audio-visual dialogue of two actors. Children's gaze switches from one speaker to the other serve as a proxy of their prediction abilities. Moreover, to better understand the basis and the impact of anticipatory behaviour, we also measured children's ability to understand the dialogue content, their speech perception and memory skills as well as their rhythmic skills, that also require temporal predictions. Importantly, we compared children with CI performances with those of an age-matched group of children with normal hearing (NH). While children with CI revealed poorer speech perception and verbal working memory abilities than NH children, there was no difference in gaze anticipatory behaviour. Interestingly, in children with CI only, we found a significant correlation between dialogue comprehension, perceptual skills and gaze anticipatory behaviour. Our results extend to a dialogue context of previous findings showing an absence of predictive deficits in children with CI. The current design seems an interesting avenue to provide an accurate and objective estimate of anticipatory language behaviour in a more ecological linguistic context also with young children. What is already known on the subject Children with cochlear implants seem to have difficulties extracting structure from and learning sequential input patterns, possibly due to signal degradation and auditory deprivation in the first years of life. They also seem to have a reduced use of contextual information and slow language processing among children with hearing loss. What this paper adds to existing knowledge Here we show that when adopting a rather complex linguistic context such as watching a dialogue of two individuals, children with cochlear implants are able to use the speech and language structure to anticipate gaze switches to the upcoming speaker. What are the clinical implications of this work? The present design seems an interesting avenue to provide an accurate and objective estimate of anticipatory behaviour in a more ecological and dynamic linguistic context. Importantly, this measure is implicit and it has been previously used with very young (normal-hearing) children, showing that they spontaneously make anticipatory gaze switches by age two. Thus, this approach may be of interest to refine the speech comprehension assessment at a rather early age after cochlear implantation where explicit behavioural tests are not always reliable and sensitive.

Through our indigenous greeting terms, we are identified: a study of Tshivenḓa from Tshimbupfhe, Vhembe District Municipality, Limpopo, South Africa

ABSTRACT This study aimed to explore the importance of indigenous Tshivenḓa greeting terms as a means of social identification among Tshimbupfhe residents from the Vhembe District Municipality (VDM), South Africa. Indigenous Tshivenḓa greeting terms constitute a significant part of verbal behaviour through which the cultural practices of a society can be maintained as aspects of speakers’ identity. Disregarding these forms of greeting in any formal communication setting may result in a loss of identity, respect, and dignity, as well as causing misunderstandings, language shift, and death. The study adopted face-to-face semi-structured interviews to collect data. The theoretical framework used was the social identity theory (SIT). The findings of this study revealed that Tshivenḓa forms of greeting are not only for greeting purposes; they are also used as identity markers. Consequently, the study recommended that Tshivenḓa speakers, especially the youth, should not compromise on using their native forms of greeting, regardless of modernisation, as it is the only way that they can easily identify themselves and display politeness in any communication encounter. The study contributes to the maintenance and understanding of these forms of greeting as tools for identification.

Students' Communication Behavior in Achieving Learning Targets in Kampung Inggris Pare Kediri, East Java

The students who are immigrants from various regions in Inonesia come to Kampung Inggris to learn English English is a foreign language which requires practice in order to become accustomed to English. In achieving the learning goals, students communicate, either using language that is done verbally or using movements or visualizations in a non verbal way. Therefore, it is interesting to examine the communication behavior of student, both verbal and non-verbal in Kampung Inggris Pare Kediri in achieving learning targets. The research method uses qualitative phenomenology by thoroughly describing the data obtained during the research process. The data collection technique uses observation, in-depth interviews, and documentation. The theoretical foundation uses the theory of operant conditioning which is a conditioning process of strengthening behavior that can result in the behavior recurring or disappearing according to wishes. Moreover, it also uses the theory of social construction where there is social knowledge and reality. The results showed that Students' daily verbal communication behavior is not always in English. Only in the dormitory students must use English. Students choose a conversation partner that is one level or a higher level. Students switch reading to English reading. Non-verbal communication behavior when students wear casual clothes. Facial expressions and body movements can help in interpreting conversations. Confused students can be identified by a weakened intonation of their voice and a tendency to be silent. The more confident the student, the higher the intonation.

THE PROBLEM OF THE EFFECTUATION OF AN EMPATHOGENIC COMMUNICATIVE SITUATION ON THE ILLOCUTIONARY FUNCTIONING OF EMPATHIC SPEECH ACTS

This article is an extension of the author’s study concerned with the verbal sphere of empathy in a func-tional-pragmatic focus. The purpose of the work is to demonstrate the conditionality of the illocutionary functio-ning of empathic speech manifestations according to the empathogenic communicative situation in the pragmatic structure of verbal empathy. The analysis was based on material borrowed from Russian and French communica-tion platforms with the common themes “He/she abandoned me” and “The birth of a child”. The author’s interpre-tation of the “empathogenic” situation was proposed as a result of the joint verbal behavior of the addressee and the addressee, whose illocutionary intention is to initiate and maintain dialogical statements with empathic potential. Two poles of an empathogenic situation are identifi ed based on the qualitative indicator of the valence of a posi-tive/negative sign characterizing the eventful nature of the situation, as well as the manifestation of positively or negatively charged emotions of communicants. The urgency is determined by the functional description of the pragmatic meanings of empathic utterances involving the previously unconsidered positive emotional range of in-teraction between communicants, an attempt to establish the substructural interaction of empathic functions and subfunctions in the illocutionarily organized spheres of empathy and co-rejoycing as well. As the issue, the obvious importance of the eff ectuation of an empathogenic speech situation on the verbalization of empathic illocution was established. The general illocutionary functions of “consolation” of the empathic sphere of empathy and “prolonga-tion of joyful feelings” of the empathic sphere of co-rejoycing are described. Subordinated empathic subfunctions with speech-acting manifestations in empathic messages are presented. Invariant subfunctions of empathic orien-tation, namely cognitive-evaluative, encouraging, and participative in situations of positive and negative emotional background, are determined. The illocutionary types of (sympathetic) understanding and argumentation of “this is life” are demonstrated as speech mechanisms of consolation in an empathogenic situation of a negative emotional range. A positively oriented communication situation is verbalized by a speech act of co-rejoycing, (good)wishes, praises, or a speech strategy to promote “I’m ready to help”.

Micro-expression recognition based on euler video magnification and 3D residual network under imbalanced sample

A student’s verbal behavior plays a crucial role in education, while nonverbal behavior, such as micro-expressions, significantly improves teaching quality. To address the problem of small facial expression movements, imbalanced data categories, and lack of temporal information in static expressions, a micro-expression recognition method is proposed based on Eulerian Video Magnification (EVM) and a 3D Residual Network (3D ResNet) under imbalanced samples. Firstly, face detection in the Dlib library is used to locate the face in the micro-expression video sample and crop it. Secondly, the EVM is used to magnify the motion features in micro-expressions. Then, the 3D ResNet is used to extract spatio-temporal information from micro-expression video samples, and the Cyclical Focal Loss (CFL) function is introduced in the network training process to solve the class imbalance problem in micro-expression datasets. Finally, the roles of the EVM and the CFL function in recognizing micro-expressions by the 3D ResNet are analyzed. The experimental results on the Spontaneous Micro-expression Database (SMIC) and Chinese Academy of Sciences Micro-expression Database II (CASME II) demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of this method. The proposed method can assist in teaching evaluation and promote the development of smart classrooms, and further research is needed on the storage and computing of the proposed method on devices.

Gambaran Sikap Percaya Diri Korban Bullying Verbal Di MAN 3 Sleman

Verbal bullying, namely bullying that is carried out by mocking or throwing words that lead to excessive humiliation which causes excessive fear and a decrease in self-confidence in the victim. The purpose of this study was to determine the description of the self-confidence of MAN 3 Sleman verbal bullying victims. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative. The subjects in this study amounted to 7 students who were victims of verbal bullying and 21 students as observers as observers of the validity of verbal bullying events and see the self-confidence of victims of bullying. The results of this study indicate that verbal bullying behavior has an impact on the self-confidence of victims of bullying, namely there are victims of bullying who experience a decrease in self-confidence, such as when doing activities or learning at school, victims become afraid to express their opinions or arguments, prefer to be alone, quiet, and even dare not go to school, but there are also victims of verbal bullying who experience increased self-confidence because the bullying behavior becomes motivation. The benefits of this research are to provide an overview and also knowledge about the description of the self-confidence of victims of verbal bullying MAN 3 Sleman so as to add theoretical references regarding the impact, anticipation and efforts regarding verbal bullying.

Sistema de categorías descriptivo-funcional para la conducta verbal en psicoterapia

Psychological interventions have shown effectiveness for the treatment of different psychological problems. Now, we need to know what processes make these results possible. The observational analysis of the verbal interaction between therapist and client has been used to analyze the learning processes that underlie the client’s behavioral change. To our knowledge, there is no coding system for therapeutic interaction based on functional descriptions that would allow a common understanding across different behavior therapies. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to develop such functional description-based coding system for clinical psychologists’ verbal behavior in clinical settings. Also, we have analyzed 66 clinical sessions belonging to 23 different cases using this coding system, the results have been compared with previous studies. The main result of this study is a system consisting of 5 functional categories with good reliability indices and methodological properties. The discriminant and cluster analysis have yielded similar results to those of previous studies. Finally, we discuss about conceptual and methodological advances of this functional-based coding system, we list the main limitations, and we propose further studies in this line of research.

Real-Time Multi-Map Saliency-Driven Gaze Behavior for Non-Conversational Characters.

Gaze behavior of virtual characters in video games and virtual reality experiences is a key factor of realism and immersion. Indeed, gaze plays many roles when interacting with the environment; not only does it indicate what characters are looking at, but it also plays an important role in verbal and non-verbal behaviors and in making virtual characters alive. Automated computing of gaze behaviors is however a challenging problem, and to date none of the existing methods are capable of producing close-to-real results in an interactive context. We therefore propose a novel method that leverages recent advances in several distinct areas related to visual saliency, attention mechanisms, saccadic behavior modelling, and head-gaze animation techniques. Our approach articulates these advances to converge on a multi-map saliency-driven model which offers real-time realistic gaze behaviors for non-conversational characters, together with additional user-control over customizable features to compose a wide variety of results. We first evaluate the benefits of our approach through an objective evaluation that confronts our gaze simulation with ground truth data using an eye-tracking dataset specifically acquired for this purpose. We then rely on subjective evaluation to measure the level of realism of gaze animations generated by our method, in comparison with gaze animations captured from real actors. Our results show that our method generates gaze behaviors that cannot be distinguished from captured gaze animations. Overall, we believe that these results will open the way for more natural and intuitive design of realistic and coherent gaze animations for real-time applications.

Evaluation of incest cases in Sivas: Ten‐year retrospective study

AbstractAlthough incest is generally perceived as all kinds of verbal, non‐verbal, physical and visual sexual behaviour of family members and close relatives toward children, it is also a special type of sexual abuse defined as consensual sexual intercourse between close relatives or between minors who are legally prohibited from marrying. This study aimed to analyse the sociodemographic data, physical‐mental examination and laboratory findings of the incest cases. Incest cases among sexual abuse and sexual assault cases sent to Sivas Cumhuriyet University Hospital Forensic Medicine outpatient clinic for examination between 2012 and 2021 were evaluated. Statistical analysis of the data was performed using the SPSS 23.0 program. P‐values below 0.05 were considered significant. The records of 61 incest victims were retrospectively analysed. The cases were examined in terms of age, gender, incident, perpetrator, type of abuse, examination findings and mental status. Fifty‐four (88.5%) of the incest victims were female, and the highest rate (n = 9, 14.8%) was 16 years old. Most of the victims were high school graduates (29%), 56% were in a nuclear family 57.4% of the assailants were family members, most of the case reports (73.8%) were made by the victim herself/himself, and the most common place of incident (70.3%) was the victim's home. In this study, the clinical, social and forensic outcomes of incest cases, which have many causes and tragic consequences, were investigated, and it was aimed to contribute to the solution of the problem by discussing the literature.

STUDY OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION OF CONFERENCE INTERPRETERS’ LINGUISTIC PERSONALITY

The article is devoted to the relevance and significance of nonverbal communication in a comprehensive approach to the study of the linguistic personality of a conference interpreter. The author explains the use of the communicative-functional approach to the analysis of verbal and nonverbal behaviour of the interpreter’s linguistic personality. The hypothesis of the study brings out that the nonverbal behaviour of the interpreter’s linguistic personality is determined by the content of the translated utterance, the interpreter’s internal motivation and intention (the pragmatic level of the linguistic personality), and it is consistently proved that nonverbal means shall be considered as part of the structural model of the linguistic personality, influencing the verbal representation of the linguistic personality. The author analyses a nonverbal sign (at its beginning, middle and end of its expression) and a translation syntagm as minimal units of study. The units of the study were collected by solid sampling from 14 video recordings of interpretation series, total study includes 105 minutes with records of nonverbal signs used by linguistic personality the interpreters participated in the study. As a result, the author classified nonverbal signs into vegetatives and somatives, and she structurally described the content of the groups of kinesic somatives, oculesic somatives and prosodic somatives, presenting the semantic content of nonverbal signs; within kinesic somatives, the author described a subgroup of comfort-gestures. The paper concludes about the prospect of further study of nonverbal communication and its importance for the study of linguistic personality in general.

Bridging The Gap Between Dentistry and Chronic Disease Prevention

Over the past few years, oral health has been gaining more attention concerning its connection to overall health and the prevention of chronic diseases. Beijing Health Service Survey research shows that oral health behavior is related to the risk of chronic diseases in middle-aged and older adults living in Beijing, China (Guo et al., 2023). Bad oral hygiene practices are implicated in poor cardiovascular diseases (CVD) as well as endocrine and nutritional metabolic disorders, as stated by the findings. This confirms that oral health behavior is an important modifiable risk factor for chronic illnesses, thereby necessitating integrated intervention programs between oral health and regular disease control. Guo et al. (2023) denote a particular pertinence of the study focusing on middle-aged and older people, considering China’s aging population and the escalating prevalence of chronic diseases. By evaluating the daily frequency of toothbrushing as an oral health behavior index, this research has provided valuable information about how simple oral hygiene practices can impact the risk for chronic conditions. These findings add to a growing evidence base that underscores the significance of oral health in preventive healthcare strategies. This paper aimed to explore paths that would link verbal health behavior with chronic diseases and to develop targeted programs that could enhance middle-aged and older adults’ practices regarding dental management.

Parental verbal communication and modeling behavior during mealtimes shape offspring eating behavior – A systematic review with a focus on clinical implications for eating disorders

ObjectiveThe aim of this review is to provide an overview of parental communication patterns during mealtimes, with a special emphasis being placed on the differences between families with and without a history of eating disorders. MethodsThe systematic review was conducted according to the PRISMA statement. A systematic literature search was carried out in PubMed, PubPsych and PsycINFO and the results were assessed for eligibility by two independent raters using the PICOS criteria. Only studies that included a mealtime observation were considered suitable for analysis of both explicit and implicit parental communication. ResultsThe results of the review suggest that mothers communicate more, with more complexity, and with a greater variety of words with their children during mealtimes compared to fathers. The intention and type of communication is diverse and heterogeneous. In general, parents often tried to encourage their children to eat. Verbal modeling and co-eating appeared to be common behaviors. Mothers with a history of eating disorders expressed more negative emotions during eating than mothers without eating disorders. Findings regarding the use of positive comments and controlling speech are contradicting. DiscussionThe review outlines major fields of parent-child communication and modeling behavior around family meals which might be relevant to investigate and integrate into models of intergenerational transmission of eating behavior and disordered eating.

The Effects of Discrete Trial and Natural Environment Teaching on Adaptive Behavior in Toddlers With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The literature has yet to review the differential effects of Natural Environment Teaching (NET) and Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT) on adaptive skills. A sample of 142 children diagnosed with ASD between the ages of 16 and 35 months received either DTT, NET, or both interventions (NET+ DTT). The Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (BSID) Adaptive Subscale and the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP) Barriers Assessment were used as baseline and posttest measures. Children who received NET and NET+DTT conditions showed significant improvements compared to the DTT condition indicating that the addition of NET leads to increased adaptive skills and decreased barrier behaviors in participants. DTT may also play a necessary foundational role for children with more significant delays. These results provide support for the use of a combination of teaching strategies in community-based early intervention and refine protocols for teaching adaptive skills to toddlers with ASD.

Adaptive virtual agent: Design and evaluation for real-time human-agent interaction

When we converse, we adapt our behaviors to our interlocutors. The adaptation can serve to indicate our engagement which can also elicit enhancement of the involvement of others. Virtual agents (or socially interactive virtual agents) that play the role of interaction partners can improve the human users’ interaction experience by displaying continuous and adaptive behaviors in real time. Virtual agents have been used in multiple domains to improve user interaction and performance. The promising results of the endowment of adaptation to agents in increasing the agents’ perception and user experience were shown in previous studies. In this paper, we develop an adaptive virtual agent that renders real-time adaptive behaviors based on the behaviors shown by its human interlocutor. The ASAP model rendering reciprocally adaptive agent behavior was employed to realize the system. The system consists of four main parts: perception of social signals, agent adaptive behavior generation, agent visualization (i.e. rendering of the agent’s verbal and nonverbal behavior), and communication of signals. To showcase the usefulness of our adaptive agent, as a proof-of-concept we choose the e-health application of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), which identifies and rectifies biased and irrational thoughts (or automatic thoughts). Through this study, we show the importance of giving the agent reciprocal adaptation capability notably in enhancing the user experience and the effectiveness of the CBT session. We validate the importance of endowing such adaptation capability by studying the difference between agents that are reciprocally adaptive, solely expressive (with mismatched behavior), and inexpressive (in a still posture) via questionnaires and measures related to the agent perception (naturalness, human-likeliness, synchrony, and engagement) for user experience and the CBT effectiveness (mood, anxiety, stress, and cognitive change). These results highlight the value of making virtual agents adapt in real time. This could lead to agents being capable of providing more personalized and interactive experiences for a wide range of applications. Also, we have collected a new human-agent interaction (HAI) database, HAI-CBT database, which is publicly available to the research community.

Care Providers’ Perspectives on the Design of Assistive Persuasive Behaviors for Socially Assistive Robots

ObjectivesThe main objectives of this research are (1) to uniquely design assistive behaviors for socially assistive robots using the principles of persuasion from behavioral psychology, and (2) to investigate caregivers’ perspectives and opinions on the use of these behaviors to engage and motivate older adults in cognitive activities. DesignWe developed 10 unique robot persuasive assistive behavior strategies for the social robot Pepper using both verbal and nonverbal communication modes. Robot verbal behaviors were designed using Cialdini's principles of persuasion; nonverbal behaviors included expansive movements of the body. Care providers' perceptions of the quality, strength, and persuasiveness of these robot persuasive behaviors were assessed based on the Perceived Argument Strength Likert scale. Setting and ParticipantsEighteen formal and informal care providers caring for older adults including those living with mild cognitive impairments participated. MethodsAn online survey was designed consisting of short videos of the Pepper robot displaying each behavior. After viewing each video, care providers completed the Perceived Argument Strength Likert scale to evaluate 6 attributes for each behavior. They also provided comments. ResultsResults show robot assistive behaviors using praise with emotion, along with emotion with commitment were the most positively rated by care providers. Qualitative responses indicate robot body language and speech quality were influencing factors in how a person perceives assistance in human-robot interactions. Conclusions and ImplicationsOur findings provide new insights into incorporating persuasive strategies into the design of assistive social robot behaviors with the aim of engaging and motivating older adults in an activity. The majority of care providers rated the robot persuasive behaviors positively. In designing a persuasive socially assistive robot for older adults, it is beneficial to display a combination of persuasive strategies, such as praise and commitment with emotion, to address individual users’ needs and cognitive levels.

Cyberincivility among Adolescents: A Systematic Review of Qualitative Evidence.

The ubiquitous use of social media places adolescents at high risk for cyberincivility (disrespectful, insensitive, or disruptive online behaviors). Adolescents who experience cyberincivility can have mental health issues including depression and suicidal ideation. However, no reviews synthesized findings from qualitative studies on cyberincivility among adolescents, which was the aim of this review. Eleven articles were extracted from MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, ERIC, and Education Full Text. Study qualities were assessed using the JBI Critical Appraisal Checklist. A meta-ethnographic framework guided the thematic analysis. Five themes were identified: forms of cyberincivility, platforms used for cyberincivility, perceptions and understanding of cyberincivility, adverse impact on health, and perceptions of seeking support. Social media was often used for cyberincivility, and common forms of cyberincivility included impersonation, aggressive verbal behaviors, and social exclusion. Adolescents perceived cyberincivility as persistent and relentless, with severe health impacts including depression, but they hesitate to seek support. Considering the negative impact of cyberincivility on adolescents' physical and mental well-being, it is important to develop anti-cyberincivility programs in schools. Schools have opportunities to efficiently reach both perpetrators and victims of cyberincivility with anti-cyberincivility programs rooted in trust building and engagement from family, community, and peers.

Factors leading to lapses in professional behaviour of Gynae residents in Pakistan: a study reflecting through the lenses of patients and family, consultants and residents

IntroductionProfessional behaviour is the first manifestation of professionalism. In teaching hospitals, the residents can be considered vulnerable to lapses in professional behaviour when they fail to meet the set standards of professionalism. Residents of some specialties are more at risk of lapses in professional behaviour due to the demanding nature of work. Research focusing on the behaviour of residents in the field of Gynae and the underlying factors contributing to such behaviour is notably lacking in the literature. Additionally, there is a gap in understanding the perspectives of patients from Pakistan on this matter, as it remains unexplored thus far, which constitutes the central focus of this study.An increase in complaints lodged against Gynae resident’s professional behaviour in Pakistan Citizen Portal (PCP) was observed. Therefore, an exploratory qualitative study was conducted to investigate the factors and rationales contributing to the lapses in resident’s professional behaviour.The study collected the viewpoints of three stakeholder groups: patients and their families, consultants and residents. The study was conducted in three phases. First, the document analysis of written complaints was conducted, followed by face-to-face interviews (11 per group) conducted by trained researchers from an independent 3rd party. Finally, the interview data was transcribed, coded and analysed.In total 15 themes were identified from the interviews with 3 stakeholders, which were then categorized and resulted in 6 overlapping themes. The most prevalent lapse reported by all 3 stakeholders was poor verbal behaviour of residents.ConclusionThe highly ranked factors contributing to triggering the situation were associated with workplace challenges, well-being of residents, limited resources, patients and family characteristics, patients’ expectations, lack of administrative and paramedic support, cultural factors and challenges specific to Gynae specialty.Another intriguing and emerging theme was related to the characteristics of patients and attendants which helped in understanding the causes and implications of conflicting environments. The value of competency also emphasized that can be accomplished by training and mentoring systems. The thorough examination of these factors by key stakeholders aided in accurately analysing the issue, its causes, and possible solutions. The study's findings will assist higher authorities in implementing corrective actions and offering evidence-based guidance to policymakers to improve healthcare system.

The impact of alcohol on affiliative verbal behavior: Asystematic review and meta-analysis.

Language is a fundamental aspect of human social behavior that is linked to many rewarding social experiences, such as social bonding. Potential effects of alcohol on affiliative language may therefore be an essential feature of alcohol reward and may elucidate pathways through which alcohol is linked to social facilitation. Examinations of alcohol's impact on language content, however, are sparse. Accordingly, this investigation represents the first systematic review and meta-analysis of alcohol's effects on affiliative language. We test the hypothesis that alcohol increases affiliative verbal approach behaviors and discuss future research directions. PsycInfo and Web of Science were systematically searched in March 2023 according to our preregistered plan. Eligible studies included social alcohol administration experiments in which affiliative verbal language was assessed. We present a random-effects meta-analysis that examines the effect of alcohol compared to control on measures of affiliative verbal behavior. Our search identified 16 distinct investigations (comprising 961 participants) that examined the effect of alcohol on affiliative verbal behavior. Studies varied greatly in methods and measures. Meta-analytic results demonstrated that alcohol is modestly associated with increases in affiliative verbal behavior (Hedges' g = 0.164, 95% CI [0.027, 0.301], p = 0.019). Study quality was rated using an adapted version of the Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies and did not significantly moderate alcohol's effects. This study provides preliminary evidence that alcohol can increase affiliative verbal behaviors. This effect may be an important feature of alcohol reward. Given heterogeneity in study features, low study quality ratings, and limited reporting of effect size data, results simultaneously highlight the promise of this research area and the need for more work. Advances in language processing methodologies that could allow future work to systematically expand upon this finding are discussed.

Verbal behavior and the future of social science.

Natural language processing (NLP)-previously the domain of a select few language and computer scientists-is undergoing an unprecedented surge in popularity across disciplines. The ubiquity of language data, alongside extremely rapid methodological innovations, has magnetized the field, attracting researchers with the promise of measuring, forecasting, and understanding the most central questions in business, psychology, biology, sociology, the humanities, and beyond. The power of language analysis to reveal insights into human thought, feeling, and behavior has become a core interest emerging from recent technological advances, which are being probed to unearth deeply embedded truths about the human condition. However, NLP research has reached a critical juncture, sitting at the cusp of societal transformation in many aspects of daily life. The details of how NLP research develops over the next 3-5 years will define this transformation. In this emerging, near-infinite space of NLP-driven research, we provide a critical frame of reference for how, when, and why these technologies should evolve in a particularly transdisciplinary manner. Specifically, we discuss (a) the urgency of pairing existing and emerging NLP research with existing scientific knowledge, theory, and principles from the behavioral sciences; (b) the coevolution of NLP technologies; and (c) the practical implications and ethical consequences of expanding language analysis using broader psychosocial theories of the human condition. While our discussion focuses principally on using language as a window in the individual mind, this topic holds substantial implications for other disciplines and lines of inquiry, including the dynamics of social interaction and beyond. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).