U.S. News and World Report interviewed me  in December 2017 about recent research publication (Language of ADHD in Adults on Social Media, Dec 2017) comparing the use of social media between ADHD and non-ADHD people. The authors specifically looked an the vocabulary between each group and discovered, not surprisingly, that ADHD individual tend to use more “colorful” language like profanity. They analyzed approximately 1.3 million tweets written by 1,399 Twitter users with self-reported diagnoses of ADHD, comparing their posts to those used by a control set matched by age, gender and period of activity. They found that users with ADHD are found to be less agreeable, more open, to post more often, and to use more negations, hedging and swear words.
More importantly, using artifical intelligence analysis, the authors could pick out the ADHD individuals with approximately 80% accuracy based on language and syntax. Translation: the use of vocabulary and syntax can reveal much more about you than you would have ever thought possible.

I have taught psychiatric residents at the Johns Hopkins Hospital for over 30 years. I tell each one “When ever someone is speaking, they are telling you something personal about themselves. The question is ‘Do you have the secret decoder ring?’ With the above research, apparently artificial intelligence will be the decoder ring in the near future. Imagine wearing glasses that would give you this insight in real time as you conversed with someone…and someone you are talking with is wearing the glasses. Scary? No, worse. Incomprehensible. Well, never mind. It’s not available…yet.

Thank you for reading my musing.