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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Sarah Knight
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
© The Author(s) 2022. This article focuses on behavioral markers—changes in communicative behaviors that reliably indicate the presence and severity of mental health conditions. We explore the potential of behavioral markers to provide new insights and approaches to diagnosis, assessment, and monitoring, with a particular focus on music therapy for depression. We propose a framework for understanding these markers that encompasses three broad functional categories fulfilled by communicative behaviors: semantic, pragmatic, and phatic. The disordered interactions observed in those with depression reflect changes in many types of communicative behavior, but much research has focused on pragmatic behaviors. However, changes in phatic behaviors also seem likely to be important, given their crucial role in facilitating interpersonal relationships. Given the strong phatic element of music-making, music represents a fertile context in which to explore these behaviors. We argue here that the uniquely multimodal and profoundly interactive environment of music therapy in particular allows for the identification of changes in pragmatic and phatic communicative behaviors that reliably indicate depression presence/severity. By identifying these behavioral markers, we open the door to new ways of assessing depression, and improving diagnosis and monitoring. Furthermore, this markers-based approach has broad implications, being applicable beyond depression and beyond music therapy.
Author(s): Knight S, Spiro N
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Musicae Scientiae
Year: 2023
Volume: 27
Issue: 3
Pages: 637-654
Print publication date: 01/09/2023
Online publication date: 15/08/2022
Acceptance date: 02/04/2018
Date deposited: 04/12/2024
ISSN (print): 1029-8649
ISSN (electronic): 2045-4147
Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/10298649221116024
DOI: 10.1177/10298649221116024
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