Symposium
Artificial Intelligence and Technology-based Interventions
Suzanna Azevedo, PsyM (she/her/hers)
UNSW
Randwick, New South Wales, Australia
Tomas Meaney, B.S., M.S., Ph.D. (he/him/his)
post-Doctorate
University of New South Wales
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Richard Bryant, B.A., Ph.D., PsyM
Scientia Professor, head of Traumatic Stress Clinic
University of New South Wales
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Background: The reward processing system has increasingly been implicated in the onset and maintenance of prolonged grief disorder. Positive affect can serve as a protective factor when managing stressful life events. Most research conducted on positive affect and anhedonia in prolonged grief populations has primarily been self-report based. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have allowed for more sophisticated measurement of quantitative facial, vocal, and linguistic biomarkers from video recordings of a person’s emotional reactions to stimuli in real time.
Objective: This study examines whether the ability to access positive affect during recollection of a loss is associated with the severity of prolonged grief symptoms.
Methods: 140 bereaved participants, half of which had probable prolonged grief disorder were videorecorded whilst talking about the death of a close loved one.
Results: Responses were analysed using OpenWillis software that synthesizes facial (e.g., facial expressivity, pupil dilation), acoustic (e.g., pitch, tone, jitter), and linguistic (e.g., sentiment) variables to profile anhedonia. Findings indicate that positive affect during recollection is significantly associated with reported grief symptoms and is characterized by a distinct pattern of facial, acoustic, and speech markers.
Conclusions: These results highlight the role of positive affect in coping with loss and demonstrate the utility of digital measurement of emotional responses in PGD. This approach offers important implications for theory, assessment, and treatment.