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Cell Phones Can Hear Depression in People’s Voices

nautil.us

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Re: Cell Phones Can Hear Depression in People’s Voices

#11

Post by krigi »

johnloeber wrote: post #3
georgeecollins wrote: post #2

Someone please make an app that makes psychiatric analysis based on voice! I can think of a million uses, from tracking my own mood to secretly diagnosing my co-workers.

>Psychiatric analysis based on voice The benefits of this when implemented correctly nonwithstanding, there's a major problem in that any implementation is highly likely to be quite flawed. See the proliferation of "health-tracking" apps that are basically quackery. With psychiatric analysis --- where the signals to track are much weakly defined than heart rate, blood pressure, etc. --- it is far too likely that apps…

I did plenty of graduate work with speech recognition; and detecting cognitive states based on speech is not much better than a coin-flip. Depression, drunkenness, deceit, happiness, etc. are hard to detect for an arbitrary person with accuracy. Speech signals for latent states in human behavior are highly idiosyncratic. The answer I always give when asked if something can be detected by speech (most requested - lying): "Yes, but only if you have a lot of time and want it to be accurate for at most a couple people. And it's going to be expensive."

Re: Cell Phones Can Hear Depression in People’s Voices

#12

Post by ksk »

orand wrote: post #8

"Cell phones can do X" is so link-baity. This is really "microphones + signal analysis can hear depression in people's voices."

Agreed, but it also narrows down on certain things. For e.g. it could mean that the computing power required is small, and that you don't need an expensive microphone that captures a wide frequency range.

Re: Cell Phones Can Hear Depression in People’s Voices

#13

Post by michaelochurch »

Aldo_MX wrote: post #5

What if I'm in a good mood and the NSA believes I'm a maniac just because a telemarketer cold-called me?

It'd take a lot of speech data to make a diagnosis, and I'd imagine it'd be error-prone at first.

As for how to differentiate hypomania from excitement, I'm skeptical that it can be done. But if someone who usually talks 50% of the time in conversations is taking 95% of the time, and this persists over weeks, there's a signal there. Also, hypomania tends to produce a lot of run-on and deeply-nested (even Lispy (as in having multiple levels of implicit parentheses)) sentences.

Not enough personal experience with actual mania (as opposed to hypomania) to opine on it or guess what its signals might be. Only had it a couple times and none recently.

Re: Cell Phones Can Hear Depression in People’s Voices

#14

Post by cmdlinerambo »

orand wrote: post #8

"Cell phones can do X" is so link-baity. This is really "microphones + signal analysis can hear depression in people's voices."

I totally get what your saying about it being link baitish. However,if the manic compression in my voice could be caught by my phone before I make an urgent call, it would be most advantageous, as opposed to a microphone on my computer.

Re: Cell Phones Can Hear Depression in People’s Voices

#15

Post by mkal_tsr »

mahyarm wrote: post #9
mkal_tsr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>to secretly diagnosing my co-workers. Interesting that you explicitly mention you'd do it without their knowledge/consent...

Any sort of learned tells from human psychology could be extended on that principle then.

Just seemed weird to me to mention doing it in a secretive/unconsenting manner, of people you're supposed to trust, and handing off private conversations to third parties without asking. It says a lot about respect toward one another.

Re: Cell Phones Can Hear Depression in People’s Voices

#16

Post by [deleted] »

ksk wrote: post #12
orand wrote: post #8

"Cell phones can do X" is so link-baity. This is really "microphones + signal analysis can hear depression in people's voices."

Agreed, but it also narrows down on certain things. For e.g. it could mean that the computing power required is small, and that you don't need an expensive microphone that captures a wide frequency range.

[deleted]

Re: Cell Phones Can Hear Depression in People’s Voices

#17

Post by stanley »

johnloeber wrote: post #3
georgeecollins wrote: post #2

Someone please make an app that makes psychiatric analysis based on voice! I can think of a million uses, from tracking my own mood to secretly diagnosing my co-workers.

>Psychiatric analysis based on voice The benefits of this when implemented correctly nonwithstanding, there's a major problem in that any implementation is highly likely to be quite flawed. See the proliferation of "health-tracking" apps that are basically quackery. With psychiatric analysis --- where the signals to track are much weakly defined than heart rate, blood pressure, etc. --- it is far too likely that apps…

Agreed that this alone would be insufficient but there's value in sharing this information with the patient's doctor, who could choose to ignore it if there's no other evidence.

Besides, we have to start somewhere, right? If I had the opportunity, I would release it as an open-source project for other medical professionals to improve upon. I certainly wouldn't go as far as submitting it to the app store for the reasons you mentioned, i.e. the detriment to the user.

Re: Cell Phones Can Hear Depression in People’s Voices

#19

Post by 0942v8653 »

mkal_tsr wrote: post #6
georgeecollins wrote: post #2

Someone please make an app that makes psychiatric analysis based on voice! I can think of a million uses, from tracking my own mood to secretly diagnosing my co-workers.

>to secretly diagnosing my co-workers. Interesting that you explicitly mention you'd do it without their knowledge/consent...

I think that part was sarcastic. Everyone hates that guy who reads five sentences from Wikipedia and is convinced you have an especially bad case of the Bajoran flu.
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