Objective. This study aimed to analyze the factor structure of the simplified Beck Depression Inventory BDI-S translated from German and attempted for a theoretical justification of its items based on the theory of homeostatically protected mood. BDI-S uses a frequency scale instead of the original rating of the degree of the measured behavior by separate descriptions (21x4 descriptions); thus creating a tool with a four times lower number of items. Method. The questions were answered by N = 1108 people aged from 18 to 70. As in the case of BDI-II, the PAF (principal axis factoring) method and oblique rotation (Promax) were used on half of the participants to analyze the structure of BDI-S; and CFA was used on the other half of the participants. Gender invariance was verified and factor reliability was determined. Results. Using EFA the two-factor structure found by the authors of the original BDI-II questionnaire in students (cognitive-affective dimension, factor 1; and somatic dimension, factor 2) was not supported, but the somatic-affective and cognitive dimensions, which were found by the authors of the original BDI-II in patients (Beck et al., 1996) were supported. CFA confirmed the identified two-factor structure, which was invariant in terms of gender. Conclusions. The two identified dimensions of BDI-S in the general population represent the contents identified by BDI-II in patients. An attempt to apply the theory of homeostatically protected mood seems to be unsuccessful for two reasons: a) In the questionnaire, depressed mood and loss of pleasure and interest are not sufficiently represented, namely, they were not represented by the separate factor in the results; b) In the general population, it can be expected that there will be no longer-lasting negative change in the homeostatically protected mood. Study limitation. The results may have been affected by online data collection at the time of the pandemic.
The paper demonstrates how pragmatic features of certain developmental disorders, including Autism Spectrum Disorder, can be described in a formal pragmasemantic framework. We apply ÂeALIS, the pragmasemantic system (Alberti, Kleiber, Schnell, & Szabó 2016) which offers a formal representation for linguistically encoded speech acts and for the beliefs, desires and intentions that are present in the minds of potential interlocutors. It defines worldlets which include the BDI states of the speaker, as well as BDI states that the speaker assumes the hearer has, in an unlimited recursive pattern. The model is built upon the idea that the worldlets are organized in a system of multi-level tree-structures and are easily processable and accessible in communication for the intact human mind. In this formally defined system, the intensity of the different BDIs (e.g. strong/weak belief) belonging to the worldlets must be signaled by the interlocutors, using pragmatic tools. We found that pragmatic inaccuracy is detectable in ÂeALIS when it is related to inappropriate presentation of BDIs (e.g. inability to identify the illocutionary goals), poor reciprocity (e.g. ToM1 and ToM2 problems), impairment of coding/decoding (e.g. incorrect semantical and syntactical coding of the information structure) and insensitivity to intensity (e.g. the misuse of discourse markers). These symptoms can be present in any of the aforementioned disorders. Our “atlas” can illustrate that the so-called “pragmatic deficit” has a formally definable structure.
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