Detecting Features of Interpersonal Difficulties in First-Person Accounts of Schizophrenia; Automated Linguistic and Network Analyses.

Background: First-person accounts (FPAs) provide multi-faceted insights into the lived social experiences of schizophrenia. We examined FPAs and third-person accounts (TPAs) using automated linguistic and network analyses to extract narrative patterns in relation to interpersonal difficulties. Study Design: Narratives from 279 articles published in Study Results: Greater authenticity and lower confidence were detected in FPAs compared to TPAs. FPAs contained fewer social words and more "I" words than TPAs. FPAs with interpersonal difficulties were longer, more negative, and less linguistically formal than FPAs without interpersonal difficulties. Network analysis indicated a link between interpersonal difficulties and "voices." Conclusions: Narratives categorized by interpersonal difficulties exhibit distinct linguistic signatures revealed through automated linguistic tools and network analyses. Despite the vast range of topics in FPAs, these computational methods provide a robust quantitative framework for validating the lived experience of negative syndrome in schizotypy.