Abstract
Case report notes on encounters and exchanges between a clinician and a patient are a rich and irreplaceable source of information in studies of psychopathology. The analysis and exploitation of these notes may be considerably enhanced by transcribing the original notes to computer text files, and subsequently submitting these files to computerized “reading.” This makes it possible to take account both of qualitative and quantitative features of the behaviour and events described in the notes. Notes taken during encounters with an autistic subject were analyzed in this way. The subject's verbal and gestural repertoires were identified, together with their relative frequencies, their principal associations, and their trends over successive encounters for the items described. The method also made it possible to specify the way in which the Observer was involved in encounters, and his role in them. Major conclusions were that the autistic subject distinctly avoided triadic situations, preferentially pronounced words and phonemes similar to those of his own name, and did not distinguish between the representations he had of persons, objects, places, gestures and words. He also failed to distinguish between the representation he had of himself and of his own name.
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J.-M. Vidal (Docteur d'Etat, 1976) is Chargé de Recherche CNRS. He studied the behavioral process of attachment in animals before studying discontinuities of mind between animals and humans, and psychopathological processes of “non-attachment” in autistic subjects. He has published, “Motivation et attachement,” inEncyclopédie de la Pléiade, Paris: Gallimard, 1987, and “Evolution des psychismes et évolution des organismes,” inDarwinisme et Société, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992. R. Quris is Ingénieur de Recherche CNRS. He specializes in the application of linear algebraic models in multivariate analysis which he originally applied to behavioral data from animals. More recently, he extended these applications, with his ANATEXT program, to the analysis of lexical data drawn from clinical dialogues. He is also the author of other multivariate analysis programs:Calmat Matrix Computation Tool, v. 1.4 (1993), Exeter Software, 100 North Country Road, Setauket, NY 11733, andGTABM, gestionnaire de tableaux multiples, v. 2.0 (1994), CNRS 74E, rue de Paris, 3069 Rennes, France.
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Vidal, JM., Quris, R. Computer enhanced assessment of case-notes in studies of psychopathology: The example of an autistic subject. Comput Hum 28, 335–351 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01829969
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01829969