Correlating Psychopathy With Speech Patterns 270
florescent_beige writes "Researchers from Cornell and UBC report that analysis of speech patterns using Wmatrix, along with something called the Dictionary of Affect in Language (see a demo here), shows that psychopaths speak differently from other people, at least statistically (abstract). Although they say that these differences are 'presumably beyond conscious control,' the authors do not say if the method has any predictive use. Regardless, the popular press has already gone headline-nonlinear about it."
PR Stunt (Score:4, Insightful)
With an irresponsible paper title like that, the authors were inviting a media circus. We're talking about research into people with mental disorder here, not a new friday night drama series.
Re:PR Stunt (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PR Stunt (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:PR Stunt (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PR Stunt (Score:5, Insightful)
A general criteria for a mental disease is that it has a strong negative effect on your life or someone else's. Psychopathy, at least the kind these guys studied, results in people getting killed.
The field of mental health has made some mistakes but I don't think calling psychopathy a disease is one of them.
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It's the same thing according to the guy who developed the psychopathy checklist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy [wikipedia.org]
(Go to section psychopathy vs. sociopathy)
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While Adderall is an amphetamine and is related to speed and meth, it is different than both. Taken per label, it does not have the stimulant effects of speed or meth, as it will be time released. Taken correctly, it does not easily lead to addiction or junkie behavior in most people. Whereas speed and meth would.
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you're right that it's not meth. however, there's both extended- and instant-release adderall. even the extended-release is just a mixture of amphetamine salts which are metabolized at different rates, thus spreading out the response. speed is just a slang word for amphetamine (sometimes specifically dextroamphetamine which is in adderall anyways), and so adderall is speed by definition.
very roughly speaking, two measures of adderall will have at least as much effect as one measure of standard amphetamine.
Re:DSM means little (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm hoping that things in the DSM are included or not included because having the condition is harmful to your self or others.
Being clinically depressed does adversely affect your life. Being manic depressive does affect your life. Being a psychopath is often very harmful to the people around the psychopath. I think some kids diagnosed with ADS are just a little more active than some "well behaved" kids and sometimes we are too quick to label them and medicate them.
Now that religious myth has less sway on many peoples moral values, being homosexual is no longer seen as harmful. I'm assuming you are being sarcastic when you state simply being homosexual is riskier than being heterosexual.
Re:DSM means little (Score:4, Informative)
A reasonable analysis would note that the behavior tends to prevent offspring and dramatically increase STD occurrence. It's thus clearly harmful, even ignoring the social effects and suicide rate. We also know it appears to be mainly caused by the womb environment, making it a birth defect.
Funny, nothing you suggest here about the harms of homosexuality are psychological harms. You realize that the DSM is designed to classify people who are experiencing mental problems, right? So, "lack of procreativity" shouldn't be included, or else being post-vasectomy would be in the DSM. "Increased STD occurrence" shouldn't be included, or else refusing to wear a condom would be a cause for being in the DSM... as would being a teenager. Social effects and suicide rates? They examined those issues, it turns out that not all homosexuals experience social problems, nor do they all attempt suicide. In fact, some homosexuals seem to be quite well adjusted and capable of performing well in a professional career. The psychologists knew this, because they had well adjusted people working in their field.
Leaving it out of the DSM is pure politics, not evidence-based medicine.
It wasn't pure politics. There was a lot of politics, because the only reason why being homosexual was in the DSM was because people believed that you couldn't be homosexual without having mental, and/or social issues. As more and more psychologists came out as being homosexual, it forced the community to recognize that, hey, being homosexual did not automatically imply that the person required psychological intervention.
Before these psychologists came out, the only homosexuals that the psychologists ever dealt with were ones who were already having "comorbid" psychological issues. So, it turns out that the psychologists thought that homosexuality automatically implied psychiatric distress was because the only people who admitted to being homosexual to them were people who were in psychiatric distress. There was a confirmation bias going on. Mentally healthy homosexuals didn't come out, and so they were hidden. And they were hidden for good reason: to avoid discrimination.
As a total hyothetical, take for example the idea that the only time doctors ever saw an appendix was if it were inflamed and infected. They would naturally presume that the only state an appendix exists in is inflamed and infected. After all, they had never seen an uninfected appendix. Now, imagine that they finally do find someone who has died, and has an uninfected appendix. Clearly, it is now not the case that appendices are pathological. They're simply a variation of human anatomy.
In the same way, psychologists were forced to recognize that homosexuality does not automatically present with mental health issues. Other ancillary conditions of homosexual body health are not sufficient to make homosexuality into a mental health disorder.
As a final note: women are more susceptible to STDs, they have a higher incident of uterine, ovarian, and cervix cancer, and in fact, there are special parts of hospitals devoted solely to treating women. Does this mean being a woman should be declared a mental health disorder? No, clearly not. It's noted on their charts like being a smoker, as there are ancillary health issues that any doctor should be aware of, but "being a smoker" is not a health disorder, and neither is "being a woman". Just like "being homosexual" is not a health disorder.
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And 100% of those with severe delusional disorders don't consider themselves sick. That's not the right argument for psychopathy not being illness.
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"Most psychopaths don't consider themselves sick."
Agreed, they consider themselves politicians.
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WHere did they find the control group? (Score:2)
How do they know the control group wasn't psychopaths? Maybe what they are measuring is the speech pattern differences in relaxed "out of the closet" pyscopaths versus psychopaths in hiding.
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Psychopathy is rare. Any decent sized random sample of college students would suffice as a control.
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Psychopathy. Otherwise it would be detectable in younger children who haven't mastered deception yet.
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Nor do most people with schizophrenia, but I think just about anybody who is *not* schizophrenic would regard it as a mental disorder.
For that matter, most drunk people don't consider themselves impaired. When your mental machinery gets a spanner in the works. your ability to judge your own mental state is one of the first things to go out the window.
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With an irresponsible paper title like that, the authors were inviting a media circus. We're talking about research into people with mental disorder here, not a new friday night drama series.
I assume the title is referring to the eponymous main character of Steppenwolf, a Hermann Hesse novel about a man who might be described as a psychopath.
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I'd make a different assumption:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Like_the_Wolf [wikipedia.org]
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Insult with no argument = troll.
Weak one, though.
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Trolling, or just stupid? The song is all about stalking.
like the wolf, hungry you are (Score:2)
As Yoda's evil twin would say.
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Use a tired gimmick like Yoda and then add evil. A joke by a genetic dead-end.
Your speech pattern is all phrases without complete sentences. This suggests to me that, like Yoda, you are a psychopath.
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That requires a citation. Psychopathy is an illness, it's not presently curable and the only methods of treatment tend to just result in more abhorrent behavior. The diagnosis itself has been folded into another diagnosis and there's still some controversy as to how precisely to categorize it, but it's extremely clear that it is indeed a type of mental illness.
Some professionals do indeed consider it a moral judgment, but it's really not any more of a moral judgment than any of the other diagnoses they use
According to the DSM and ICD... (Score:2)
Psychopathy is an illness, it's not presently curable and the only methods of treatment tend to just result in more abhorrent behavior.
Can you provide a currently accepted manual of diagnosis that lists psychopathy as a disease or disorder? I've looked through the DSM and ICD and can't seem to find it. The reason it's not in either of the accepted diagnostics manuals is because it would be a a Personality Disorder and the personality disorder criteria includes "the individual's characteristic and enduring patterns of inner experience and behaviour as a whole deviate markedly from the culturally expected and accepted range". Psychopathic be
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Killing people for fun is frowned upon by virtually all cultures. This isn't some transient fad. Simply being a psychopath doesn't get you incarcerated. It is the behaviour it leads to when the lack of empathy, lack of moral, and narcissism lead to acts that please the psychopath while harming those around him.
In what way does western culture promote psychopathic behaviour?
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We're talking about research into people with mental disorder here, not a new friday night drama series.
You're right, it's more reality TV.
first draft syndrome (Score:4, Insightful)
When I was younger, I used "because" and "since" in my writing about twice as often. Never terribly pleased by the effect--that's just how it came out. They are fairly weak transitions, useful mostly if you want a weak transition which detracts less from a central element.
This excess tapered off as I became more deeply immersed in my subject matter with age and experience. In my own history, these words were sign posts of incomplete thinking.
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My guess, reciting facts as you are learning vs. understanding a subject. A is A because of B (memorized.) vs A is A in relation to B when.... (understood)
Re:first draft syndrome (Score:4, Funny)
Re:first draft syndrome (Score:5, Funny)
I often use the term "Kill the whores!" when excited and "Demons are coming to rape my skull!" when leaving. Does this classify me as a psychopath or just an average academic?
Yes.
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Does this classify me as a psychopath or just an average academic?
Wikipedia is your friend. [wikipedia.org]
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ever terribly pleased by the effect--that's just how it came out. They are fairly weak transitions,
IF you're still interested in improving the power and directness of your writing, work on removing excess "just" and "fairly" qualifiers.
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To further improve your writing, remove excess words.
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Not psychopaths, just the murdering ones (Score:2)
From TFA:
"psychopathic murderers make identifiable word choices – beyond their conscious control – when talking about their crimes."
So we aren't talking about all psychos, just the murdering ones. And apparently only about how they refer to their crimes. But they immediately make the jump to using it as a predictive tool on social media, making it sound like you could scan peoples' Facebook postings and play "spot the killer".
Seems like a troll to me. Shame on you Cornell University Press Relati
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Just because A implies B, does not mean that B implies A.
( A = Identifiable word choices, B = Psychopathic Murderers ).
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You got A and B backward.
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He used the word "because"! KILL HIM WITH FIRE!
All psychopaths... (Score:3)
I have no doubt that the biggest a-holes you can think of are all psychopaths. Possibly more or less by definition even though psychopaths/socipaths can be recognized by brain pattern.
I said it before on slashdot, that a good way to know someone is like this, even when he tries to hide his nature to fit in as psychopaths/sociopaths do, is by looking at reversible argument
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If you're going to argue from hindsight that a certain behavior is/was a predictor for psychopathy, you need to pick a target who's been formally identified as a psychopath. Bush may have been an ass, but so far as I know he's not been diagnosed as a psychopath (neither has Gore, again as far as I know). So using either of them in your argument is just political grandstanding and detracts from your argument, IMO.
Re:All psychopaths... (Score:5, Funny)
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A Horizon programme (BBC, UK) recently talked about psychopaths in "Are you good or are you evil" and these people are often in boards of companies, or high level bosses or whatever. A way they said they could identify these psychopaths is by the fact that half the people working for such a person hates him, the other half think he (she?) is great.
This is because of a couple things Horizon left out. First Corporations are by definition Psychopathic, so those that lead corporations tend to appear psychopathic. Second Horizon, like many media outlets, confused Psychopathic with Narcissistic.
Sadly both Psychopathic and Narcissistic behavior is highly encouraged in western culture, which it turn means they don't actually qualify as Personality Disorders, which is why Neither are listed in the ICD, and with the removal of Narcissistic Personality Disor
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There is abundant reason to suspect that a fair few somewhat smarter ones, who exhibit many of the same undesirable traits but know that overt violent crime usually isn't the best way to get what you want, walk among us; but locating them and convincing them to sit down for some research is tricky. The ones doing tim
Sampling Bias, and Others (Score:2)
Is it possible that the language they are selecting for is simply some form of "prisoner's dialect", instead of a sampling of "sociopathy"? For example, Canadians tend to punctuate verbally with "Eh", and New England urban teens typically finish sentences with "Yo", and use the term "wicked" a lot (or at least they did 20 years ago when I was there). This could be an interpretation of a dialectical shift based on the environment the subject is now occupying, rather than any useful data. It might also be wis
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If that applies across languages then the worst psychopaths are German philosophers who could go for entire pages without ending a sentence.
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To continue your point. TFA says: "psychopaths often use cause-and-effect descriptors"
So do scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.
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A lot of people in the top echelons of Al-Qaeda are/were trained engineers and doctors.
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Re:Literate = Psychopath... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I have the feeling trying to talk about this here is a losing battle, because no one seems to know what a psychopath is, but you're correct.
Psychopaths have trouble because they don't actually have any empathy. Psychopaths do not have to kill people, or anything like that. They simply are utterly uncaring about how other people feel in any respect. (And most of them are smart enough to fake otherwise.)
Because they do not understand stuff that is obvious to everyone, they often end up explaining why they did something that was just obvious to everyone.
And this isn't just bad things. Psychopaths often do good things because people are watching, and they know that society says that's what they're 'supposed' to do. But they don't actually think that.
So when you ask them about why they held a door for an old person, their actual reason is 'Because I looked good doing that', but they obviously can't say that, so they'll come up with some sort of reason that doesn't make much sense.
Whereas normal people say, "Uh, because she was having trouble with it, duh."
Normal people automatically act towards each other in a certain way. Even criminals _feel_ that way, even if they ignore it. Psychopaths are doing mostly the same thing, but by rote. They learned the rules and follow them.
For psychopaths, explaining behavior in moral terms is like someone with literally no sense of humor trying to explain jokes. You could study jokes, and why and how they're funny, and laugh at the right places and fool people, but, in the end, if asked to explain, your explanations of any specific joke are distinguishable from people with actual sense of humor, at least with enough analysis.
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It's virtually impossible to draw conclusions about any paper from its abstract. Has anyone seen the full text? If so, can you report to us how this experiment was conducted, what the data were, and how they were analyzed? If not, we are all shouting down a well.
Liver and fava beans (Score:2)
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There may be something to this. Certainly if I hear someone using the terms "liver", "fava beans" and "chianti" too often in a conversation, I start to get worried.
I see that your bad keyword to sentence ratio is 150%.
Thanks for warning me not to go to your house for dinner.
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It's the "ffffssssfffssssffffsssffffsss" noise that usually tips me off.
Obviously pointless (Score:2)
I mean, who thought you could seriously learn about psychopathic killers from a bunch of talking heads [youtube.com]?
Speech analysis, welcome. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Speech analysis, welcome. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hello, speech analysis, I am proud to welcome you to the select club of phrenology, graphology, astrology and numerology.
and economics.
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And computer 'science'. Don't get me started on those guys.
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And Keynesian 'economics' - FTFY.
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Hello, speech analysis, I am proud to welcome you to the select club of phrenology, graphology, astrology and numerology.
and economics.
and meteorologists...
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Numeric analysis (Score:2)
For example, while most people tend to include certain numbers in their speech more than most, like "ninety-nine", psychopaths make bizarre choices like "fifty-three" and "forty-seven".
a curious notion.. (Score:2)
Can we use something like IBM's Watson to realtime parse and evaluate political rhetoric?
A "Psyco Score" at the bottom of the screen during election debates would be quite novel...
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Can we use something like IBM's Watson to realtime parse and evaluate political rhetoric?
That depends on the meaning of the word "is".
Here's how you change your speech patterns (Score:3)
For the budding psychopaths out there who want to "fit in" better with society, here's how to change your speech patterns.
1) Join Toastmasters along with someone you see frequently (a significant other, close friend, or coworker).
It's cheap, and they will teach you ways to improve your speech - how to recognize disfluencies, for instance.
2) Play a game with your partner where every time they hear you make a mistake, they say "ding!". That's all - just "ding!" every time they hear a problem.
(For what it's worth I've found that GF's are particularly good at noticing such flaws.)
It takes a week or two, but the constant feedback will eventually sink in and you'll be able to hold long conversations without saying "ah", "um", "you know", and so on.
3) Rhythm, meter, and pauses are more difficult. Find a newscaster whose vocal style you like and record one of their broadcasts.
It doesn't matter whether you agree with their point of view, only that you like their vocal variety. (You could choose Rush Limbaugh, for instance.) I chose Morley Safer.
Edit the broadcasts into individual sentences and rip these to a CD as individual tracks. While you are driving to work, play a sentence on infinite repeat. Recite the sentence along with the speaker over and over. Try to recite it exactly, mimicking the pauses and intonations.
You'll spend a few iterations just remembering the words. Once you know the words, your ear will start to pick out subtle emphasis and pauses used by the speaker. You'll start to learn when to pause (after prepositions, for instance), where to put emphasis to make a point, and so on.
When you get bored, switch to another sentence.
Don't do the mimicry thing more than a couple of weeks or you'll end up sounding *exactly* like the broadcaster. Switch to another one, mix it up a little.
As a side effect of all this, people will view your method of speech as more meaningful, you will be perceived as more reliable and confident, and people will give you greater respect.
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Unfortunately, in step 2, your proposed psychopath was unable to resist murdering his opponent after the first ding. Poor impulse control in that population makes this kind of long term plan very unlikely to be useful.
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Rush Limbaugh would be an especially interesting choice, as his vocal patterns are somewhat influenced by his deafness, which is only partially mitigated by the installation of cyborg ear parts.
But what if (Score:2)
The psychopath uses a teleprompter?
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Then you have a trial in the Senate and impeach him.
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Senate? Impeach? Who are you talking about?
fuck you (Score:5, Funny)
no fucking way word patterns indicate psychopathology you ignorant motherfucker
i'll take a fucking broomstick and ram it down your fucking gullet if i hear one fucking peep from your ignorant piehole about word patterns indicating a propensity for psychopathology and then rape your mother with the same fucking broomstick. are fucking listening to me?
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Are you talking to me?
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But I didn't even *say* "Niagara Falls"...oh shit...
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no, attacking democratic lawmakers:
http://gawker.com/5501717/tea-party-vigilantes-out-for-liberal-blood [gawker.com]
i know: you heard on Faux News that only the occupy wall street crowd is violent, and the tea party is peaceful. what a well behaved propagandized automaton you are, dutifully reporting and believing the lies that are spoonfed to you. you make a good slave
Makes sense (Score:3)
wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
psychopaths used more conjunctions such as “because “ or “since,”
Sounds like another attempt to label left-brain people as psychopaths.
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Very simple speech pattern analysis actualy (Score:2)
The real meat of their software is a small routine that counts references to Huey Lewis, any mention of this artist more than 3 times in a 10 minute period results in a 100% match.
Oh wow, who could have ever guessed? (Score:2)
Popular Press (Score:2)
the popular press has already gone headline-nonlinear about it."
Don't get any ideas. Slashdot is also the popular press.
Control Group (Score:3)
I work as a transcriptionist, including transcribing political debates, and having to listen to people word for word I can attest that you can get a sense of when people are lying, and when they are saying something new versus something already known from their perspective, although it's not clear how reliable the correlations really are.
I'm wondering what their control group was. If they're analysing the speech of people "when talking about their crimes", then they presumably are not comparing them with the general population who have no convictions.
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I work for the government, you insensitive clod!
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So... what you're saying is that the capitalist system/structure is designed to reward those with psychopathic tendencies?
Note to moderators: I'm not sure this should be modded "Funny"
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Tell me Clarice, have the lambs stopped right-sizing?
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I know it's a joke, but we can try a checklist....
Abstract:
"Psychopaths (relative to their counterparts) included more rational cause-and-effect descriptors (e.g., ‘because’, ‘since’), focused on material needs (food, drink, money), and contained fewer references to social needs (family, religion/spirituality)."
Check.
"Psychopaths’ speech contained a higher frequency of disfluencies (‘uh’, ‘um’) indicating that describing such a powerful, ‘emotional
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"Yo, dawg, I heard you liked prison..."
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Interesting numbers they used... 14 "psychopaths", and 38 "controls"...
Perhaps they selected their target/control groups based on how well they appeared to match the anticipated results? How many subjects were actually interviewed, and where is the rest of the data?
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