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Akinola – Exploring the Correlation between Tone and Affect Language and Quality of Life among Patients with Advanced Cancer and their Partners

 

Exploring the Correlation between Tone and Affect Language and Quality of Life among Patients with Advanced Cancer and their Partners (2024)

Undergraduate: Adunoluwa Akinola


Faculty Advisor: Laura Porter
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

Advanced cancer diagnoses are often devastating for patients and their intimate partners on several fronts, as their respective abilities to participate in their lives and relationships as normal is drastically changed. Partners often become the primary caregivers to the patient diagnosed. Within couples, the negative psychological impacts of such a diagnosis have been shown to be ameliorated by effective and open communication between partners on topics related to cancer, though some partners report difficulties with this. To offer a greater understanding of the associations between the quality of couples’ communication—specifically tone and affect language—on their quality of life, this study recruited 85 patients (57.6% female, age range: 32-79, 92% white, 100% non-Hispanic) all with Stage III-IV lung, breast, GI or GU cancer, and 76 partners (57.7% male, age range: 31-82, 87.22% white, 98% non-Hispanic). They were administered various quality of life and were asked to have a 10 minute conversation about cancer that was audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for tone and affect language by Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software and statistically compared to their survey scores. No significant differences in tone or affect were found between patients and partners or between males and females. However, there was a significant negative association between self-reported depression and the use of sad emotion words. There were also significant negative associations between patients’ self-reported Quality of Life at End of Life (QUAL-E) completion and negative tone, negative emotion, and sad emotion. This study will add to the growing literature surrounding the mental health of patients and their partners experiencing advanced cancer diagnoses, ultimately informing future studies of this nature.