Computer language models, which analyze what children say during stressful events, are better at predicting their future mental health than a panel of experts in the field. That’s the finding from a new study published in Nature Mental Health.
Researchers ran recorded audio interviews of more than 200 children—ages 9 to 13 (on average 11 years old)—through four natural language processing models, asking the kids to speak about stressful events in their personal lives.
The result: Those models were “very accurate” at predicting whether these same children developed mental health conditions six years later in adolescence, according to the study.
Researchers drilled down to the actual words the children used—and what they found was fascinating. Across the models, the style of the kids’ speech mattered more than the content.
For example, “small connector words,” such as “and,” “to,” and “but,” were better predictors of stress than the actual descriptions of the events.
The language models showed the predictive power of linguistic style in indicating mental health, consistent with previous research that linked patterns in the use of certain words, such as “I” and first-person pronouns, and frequent use of prepositions and conjunctions, to mental health.
Although less predictive, the actual content of speech did indicate some future problems and resilience as well.
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