SALS-SIG Research Seminar

Home ButtonPeople ButtonDOTG Buttonltg buttonEmail MRI

Analysis of language for determining the effectiveness of psychotherapy

Speaker:

Jon Patrick

Sybase Chair of Information Systems, Basser Department of Computer Science, University of Sydney
Date: Tuesday 30th March 1999
Time: 11:30-12:30
Place: Seminar room 357, Building E6A, Macquarie University

Abstract:

Both outcome studies and process studies have failed to demonstrate unambiguously the merit of psychotherapy processes in assisting people to change their lives. Some therapy methods that have emerged from the modern hypnosis techniques of Milton Erikson and the perspectives of Gregory Bateson argue that effective therapy will, amongst other things, be manifest in a change in the language usage of the client. The language structures of interest fall into two classes. The first class is the use of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic language, and the second class is a range of grammatical elements that indicate the client is performing either deletion, generalisation or distortion of their direct experience of the world.

We have interviews with ten men who have gone through a group therapeutic programme called "Heal your Violence History" aimed at resolving experiences that have lead to them being violent, abusive or controlling of their families. Each man has given 3 interviews of 20-30 minutes each; before the programme, immediately after the programme, and 3-6 months later.

We are attempting to use automated techniques for analysing the changes in the two classes of language. As these language phenomena are usually out of conscious awareness we hope to determine that the change in their usage is effective at identifying change in the client. The seminar will present issues around the automatic identification of the structures of greatest interest.

Jon Patrick:
Jon holds the Sybase Chair of Information Systems at the Basser Department of Computer Science, University of Sydney. He is a registered psychologist and practices as a psychotherapist. He is currently performing research into the reconstruction of proto-basque, and has written a grammar book on Basque which has been incorporated into an NLP project with basque-english multilingual dictionaries. He has strong interests in developing natural language processing for commercial applications and in issues around information management and workflow management in the production of products based on NLP technology.

Enquiries: sals@mri.mq.edu.au

Last modified: March, 1999