BibTeX

@misc{gagliardi-etal-2021-editorial-307124,
	title        = {Editorial: Digital Linguistic Biomarkers: Beyond Paper and Pencil Test},
	abstract     = {Over the last decades, a growing body of linguistic studies have been devoted to the clinical domain (Perkins 2011), while the amount of experimental linguistic research focusing on neuroscience and mental health has increased exponentially during the last few years.
Considering that many of the factors underlying cognitive and neuropsychiatric disorders may yield to late symptoms that are hard to foresee, it is often difficult to predict the existence of a presence or risk of a disease, as well as the disease’s trajectory. In this context, interdisciplinary approaches gain increasing popularity, and the analysis of complex behaviour – such as speech and language – emerges as a natural candidate to identify and analyse the extent to which a given neuropathology can impact the cognitive system at the very early stages. In this context, the development of cognitive evaluation and intervention tools focusing on linguistic biomarkers becomes a critical scientific arena both in and outside the clinic and laboratory (see Petrizzo & Popolo, 2020).

Recent international research has demonstrated that automated collected and analysed quantitative linguistic features, easily extractable from a patient’s verbal productions, can be very useful in separating people with various cognitive or mental impairment from healthy subjects, even at a very early stage (see Bedi et al., 2015), and even to predict the outcomes of clinical interventions (see Carrillo et al., 2018). In this line, machine learning-based language technology methods and tools based on artificial intelligence are particularly promising to address this task (Locke et al. 2021; Sigman et al., 2021). Indeed, subtle language disruptions can be employed as digital linguistic biomarkers, namely objective, quantifiable behavioural data that can be collected and measured by means of digital devices, allowing for a low-cost pathology detection, classification and monitoring. Compared to classical pen-and-paper neuropsychological tests, the use of these instruments shows many advantages – such as its non-intrusive and time-effective application – providing not only offline, but also online measures that serve as a proxy for cognitive processing and its underlying mechanisms.

The aim of the Research Topic Digital Linguistic Biomarkers: Beyond Paper and Pencil Tests is to provide a state-of-the-art overview of this multidisciplinary and constantly evolving area of research, bringing together contributions from different quarters of the cognitive sciences. The collection comprises one systematic review, six original research papers, and one opinion paper. The articles are based on empirical and theoretical research from several disciplines (i.e., linguistics, psychology, Artificial Intelligence), and they tackle a range of developmental and acquired disorders. Most probably, dementia assessment has been one of the most rapidly evolving domain of Natural Language Processing (NLP) application for medical science (Petti, Baker & Korhonen 2020), but this approach is spreading rapidly through the community, with encouraging results on both developmental and acquired pathologies, as shown in the current article collection (i.e., autism, developmental language disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment, or Parkinson’s disease). Furthermore, this Research Topic covers a variety of test languages showing the degree of internationalization of the research on the analysis verbal productions (i.e., English, Italian, German, and Japanese).},
	author       = {Gagliardi, Gloria and Kokkinakis, Dimitrios and Dunabeitia, Jon Andoni},
	year         = {2021},
	volume       = {12},
	pages        = {752238},
}

@article{antonsson-etal-2021-using-301490,
	title        = {Using a Discourse Task to Explore Semantic Ability in Persons With Cognitive Impairment.},
	abstract     = {This paper uses a discourse task to explore aspects of semantic production in persons with various degree of cognitive impairment and healthy controls. The purpose of the study was to test if an in-depth semantic analysis of a cognitive-linguistic challenging discourse task could differentiate persons with a cognitive decline from those with a stable cognitive impairment. Both quantitative measures of semantic ability, using tests of oral lexical retrieval, and qualitative analysis of a narrative were used to detect semantic difficulties. Besides group comparisons a classification experiment was performed to investigate if the discourse features could be used to improve classification of the participants who had a stable cognitive impairment from those who had cognitively declined. In sum, both types of assessment methods captured difficulties between the groups, but tests of oral lexical retrieval most successfully differentiated between the cognitively stable and the cognitively declined group. Discourse features improved classification accuracy and the best combination of features discriminated between participants with a stable cognitive impairment and those who had cognitively declined with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.93.},
	journal      = {Frontiers in aging neuroscience},
	author       = {Antonsson, Malin and Lundholm Fors, Kristina and Eckerström, Marie and Kokkinakis, Dimitrios},
	year         = {2021},
	volume       = {12},
}

@inProceedings{hammarlin-etal-2021-vaccine-307227,
	title        = {Vaccine hesitancy – trust and distrust in medical expertise and authorities},
	abstract     = {The increase of vaccine hesitancy is singled out by WHO as one of the ten most important and urgent threats to global health (https://www.who.int/emergencies/ten-threats-to-global-health-in-2019). Diseases like measles are returning in different parts of Europe, partly as a result of the activities of the anti-vaccination movement. The herd immunity in most Western countries is high but even a small decrease in vaccination would have immediate negative effects for the population. Sweden offers a perfect site for future anti-vaccination studies due to its high vaccination covering. A decline in the numbers of children vaccinated has had immediate effects. For example, the incident rate in the country of pertussis rose from 700 cases to 3,200 cases per 100,000 children in 4 years due to a rather small decrease in vaccinations. This constitutes a strong argument for the civic importance of the case.

The aim of this presentation is to introduce a new 4-year research project (2020–2023), independently financed by the Bank of Sweden Foundation (Riksbankens jubileumsfond), with the goal to investigate the role and importance of rumouring for the vaccination skepticism growing on the internet, and how it can be understood as an expression of civic engagement in the present digital times entailing crucial transformations for everyday civic culture. Theoretically, the project builds upon, and develop, media researcher Dahlgren’s work on civic culture and Kitta’s studies of the anti-vaccination movement. The overarching research question is: How have the everyday practice and experience of, and the conditions for, rumours been shaped and reshaped in the digital age, and what do these processes mean for civic engagement and participation? The project will offer an understanding of how everyday interaction on the internet has a powerful impact on the spreading of false information, which in the long run may challenge democracy. On a more concrete level the project will answer the following questions in relation to the case of vaccine skepticism: How are rumours about alleged risks and dangers of vaccination propagated and established on the internet? Are there specific patterns and correlations connecting topics, assumptions, myths, argumentation schemes, popularity and time? What do everyday practices, on- and offline, of rumouring mean for its adherents’ civic engagement in the anti-vaccination movement? Which are the civic implications of the spreading and circulation of vaccination hostile rumours on individual citizens and society at large?},
	booktitle    = {8th European Communication Conference (ECREA)},
	author       = {Hammarlin, Mia-Marie and Miegel, Fredrik and Borin, Lars and Kokkinakis, Dimitrios and Jaakonaho, Anna},
	year         = {2021},
}

@incollection{johansson-etal-2021-semantic-310775,
	title        = {Semantic Role Labeling},
	booktitle    = {The Swedish FrameNet++. Harmonization, integration, method development and practical language technology applications},
	editor       = {Dana Dannélls and Lars Borin and Karin Friberg Heppin},
	author       = {Johansson, Richard and Friberg Heppin, Karin and Kokkinakis, Dimitrios},
	year         = {2021},
	publisher    = {John Benjamins Publishing Company},
	address      = {Amsterdam / Philadelphia},
	ISBN         = {978 90 272 5848 9},
	pages        = {264–280},
}

@inProceedings{kokkinakis-2021-insights-307200,
	title        = {Insights on a Swedish Covid-19 corpus},
	abstract     = {The COVID-19 pandemic has had a serious impact on people all over the world, from mental and physical health to economic downturn to education and social relationships, while political decisions in many countries have had a profound impact on the lives of all people regardless of age. Many of these effects can be studied with statistical and qualitative data such as collected questionnaires and sickness absence rates. But large-scale studies require expertise in multiple domains and from many points of view. SpråkbankenText continuously collects text from various sources. In order to fill the gap in the lack of an available Swedish COVID-19-related dataset, we started to build a Swedish COVID-19 corpus (sv-COVID-19). Various tools for e.g. lexical, semantic or pragmatic/discourse analyses can be then applied in order to answer relevant questions on e.g. how people, on a larger scale than what can be obtained through qualitative studies, experienced their everyday life through the different phases of COVID-19 crisis, or how political decisions and their consequences are described and discussed.},
	booktitle    = {CLARIN Annual Conference (Virtual Event). 27 – 29 September 2021. Monica Monachini, Maria Eskevich (red.). s. 31-34},
	author       = {Kokkinakis, Dimitrios},
	year         = {2021},
}