Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33754322›Full record

ArticleBehavior research methods2021

How do you feel? Using natural language processing to automatically rate emotion in psychotherapy.

Michael J Tanana, Christina S Soma, Patty B Kuo, Nicolas M Bertagnolli, Aaron Dembe, Brian T Pace, Vivek Srikumar, David C Atkins, Zac E Imel

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Behavior research methods, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
38citing papers in PubMed, 3 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

38 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

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  6. Scoping review on natural language processing applications in counselling and psychotherapy.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2026
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

9 authors.

Michael J TananaSocial Research Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
Christina S SomaDepartment of Educational Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA. tsoma15@gmail.com.
Patty B KuoDepartment of Educational Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
Nicolas M Bertagnollihttps://www.empathy.rocks/, Seattle, WA, USA.
Aaron DembeDepartment of Educational Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
Brian T PaceLyssn.io, Seattle, WA, USA.
Vivek SrikumarSchool of Computing, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
David C AtkinsDepartment of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Zac E ImelDepartment of Educational Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.

Funding

Implementation of Technology-Based Evaluation of Motivational InterviewingR01AA018673 · NIAAA · UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON · PI ATKINS, DAVID CHARLES, NARAYANAN, SHRIKANTH · 2010 to 2020
$5.9M
Using Technology to Scale Up the Evaluation of Motivational InterviewingK02AA023814 · NIAAA · UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON · PI ATKINS, DAVID CHARLES · 2015 to 2019
$690k
NIAAA NIH HHS K02 AA023814NIAAA NIH HHS R01 AA018673
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Emotional distress is a common reason for seeking psychotherapy, and sharing emotional material is central to the process of psychotherapy. However, systematic research examining patterns of emotional exchange that occur during psychotherapy sessions is often limited in scale. Traditional methods for identifying emotion in psychotherapy rely on labor-intensive observer ratings, client or therapist ratings obtained before or after sessions, or involve manually extracting ratings of emotion from session transcripts using dictionaries of positive and negative words that do not take the context of a sentence into account. However, recent advances in technology in the area of machine learning algorithms, in particular natural language processing, have made it possible for mental health researchers to identify sentiment, or emotion, in therapist-client interactions on a large scale that would be unattainable with more traditional methods. As an attempt to extend prior findings from Tanana et al. (2016), we compared their previous sentiment model with a common dictionary-based psychotherapy model, LIWC, and a new NLP model, BERT. We used the human ratings from a database of 97,497 utterances from psychotherapy to train the BERT model. Our findings revealed that the unigram sentiment model (kappa = 0.31) outperformed LIWC (kappa = 0.25), and ultimately BERT outperformed both models (kappa = 0.48).

Indexed as

Natural Language ProcessingPsychotherapyEmotionsHumansLanguageMachine LearningEmotionEmotion codingNatural language processingPsychotherapy processSentiment analysis

Identifiers

PMID33754322
PMCPMC8455714

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.