PhD Scientific Days 2025

Mental Health Sciences II.

Exploring Trauma-Related Language and Emotional Processing in BPD via PPG-Measured Heart Rate Responses

Name of the presenter

Kovács Zsanett

Institute/workplace of the presenter

Semmelweis University

Authors

Kovács Zsanett¹, Dr. Unoka Zsolt¹

1: Semmelweis University

Text of the abstract

Introduction:
Social functioning is influenced by the cognitive processing of social relationships, and our cognitive system is shaped by life events, including trauma. Therefore, examining the connection between language and trauma, or language and social functioning, is a valid approach. Differences between individuals with a history of trauma (here, borderline personality disorder [BPD]) and those without trauma can be detected through linguistic and physiological responses.
Aims:
In our study, we tested the hypothesis that individuals with BPD have a stronger bias toward socially and emotionally relevant words, and emotionally negative words, compared to individuals without BPD.
Methods:
A 48-item word completion task was designed, in which each word fragment could be completed with a BPD-related emotionally positive, negative, or neutral word. Participants emotionally classified each completed word, provided a word association for each, and constructed a sentence using the emotionally relevant completed words. In the other part of the experiment, participants listened to three types of recordings: (1) emotionally relevant verbs in different sentence contexts with a human voice; (2) derogatory and constructive sentences spoken in human and non-human voices; and (3) a pleasant story narrated by a human voice. Participants were asked to report their emotional responses to the recordings. A pulse oximeter was attached after completing the word fragments and remained in use throughout the rest of the experiment. Linguistic data will be analysed using content analysis. Physiological responses will be evaluated through event-related heart rate analysis, based on PPG measurements.
Result:
Preliminary analysis showed that the control group was more likely to complete word fragments with fewer negative and emotionally relevant words than the BPD group. In the listening tasks, the control group noticed more neutral words, while the BPD group primarily recalled emotionally relevant words.
Conclusion:
These tasks appear to be useful for differentiating socially focused language between the two groups. However, individuals with BPD seem more closely related to traumatic life experiences, as participants in the control group with trauma showed results more similar to those with BPD. Therefore, the next step is to find more non-traumatized control participants.
Funding: -