Our groundbreaking scientific project aimed to analyse metaphor comprehension and its connection to cognitive and affective empathysh, focusing specifically on individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD).
Metaphorical thinking has a close relationship to individual’s learning capabilities as it determines an individual’s ability to associate the given concept to an experience outside its environment. For every association that Metaphorical thinking initiates, there exist neuronal activities in prefrontal cortex of the brain, the centre of learning. Greater is the ability of an individual to associate the experience with cognition, greater would be the ability to process the given information processing ability. The lack of ability to associate between experience and cognition results in attention deficiency among learners. The present paper explains that practice of Metaphorical thinking statements during teaching-learning process increases the brain activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain in turn enables to promote the information processing ability of the individuals.
To unravel the intricacies of metaphor comprehension and empathy in BPD, we meticulously analyzed data from a diverse group of participants, consisting of 20 BPD patients and 20 healthy controls. The comprehensive dataset includes essential demographic information such as gender, age, and right-handedness/left-handedness, along with education levels and self-assessment surveys. Furthermore, we meticulously examined their performance on a meticulously designed metaphor comprehension task that encompassed general metaphors (CM), novel metaphors (NM), and diffuse stimuli (MS).
In our relentless pursuit of scientific rigor, we delved into existing literature and discovered intriguing insights regarding laterality's potential impact on individuals' perception of metaphors. With utmost integrity and a commitment to ensuring the purity of our experiment, we made the decision to exclude left-handed individuals from the general analysis due to their extremely limited representation (only one participant in group 0 and three in group 1). As a result, our analysis focused on the data from 18 participants in each group, ensuring the utmost precision and validity of our findings.
The implications of our research extend far beyond the realm of BPD, enriching our understanding of metaphor comprehension in this particular disorder while making invaluable contributions to the fields of psychology, linguistics, and empathy research. Brace yourself for the profound insights that await, as we study the complex interplay between metaphorical thinking, cognitive and affective empathy, and the potential for transformative learning experiences.
TasksTask 1: Exploratory Data Analysis
Objective: Conduct an exploratory data analysis to identify differences and similarities between the two study groups (BPD patients and healthy controls) in terms of demographic characteristics, age, and level of education.
Steps:
1. Gather the demographic data of the participants, including gender, age, and level of education.
2. Clean and preprocess the data, ensuring accuracy and consistency.
3. Generate descriptive statistics, such as mean, median, mode, and standard deviation, for each demographic characteristic.
4. Visualize the data using appropriate graphs and charts to compare the distributions of age and education level between the two groups.
5. Conduct hypothesis testing (e.g., t-test, chi-square test) to identify statistically significant differences between the groups in terms of age and level of education.
Task 2: Analysis of Results
Objective: Analyze the obtained data and draw meaningful conclusions regarding metaphor comprehension in BPD patients compared to healthy controls.
Steps:
1. Review the results of the metaphor comprehension task for both groups (BPD patients and healthy controls).
2. Summarize the performance of each group in terms of their comprehension of general metaphors (CM), novel metaphors (NM), and diffuse stimuli (MS).
3. Identify any notable patterns, trends, or differences in metaphor comprehension between the two groups.
4. Conduct statistical analysis (e.g., analysis of variance, chi-square test) to determine if there are statistically significant differences in metaphor comprehension between the groups.
5. Interpret the findings, highlighting any significant differences or similarities between the groups in relation to metaphor comprehension.
Task 3: Deep Analysis of Data
Objective: Conduct a deep analysis of the data, including statistical processing of the obtained data and studying the relationship between test results and personal indicators such as fantasy, empathy, and degree of disorder.
Steps:
1. Gather additional data on personal indicators such as fantasy, empathy, and degree of disorder for each participant.
2. Clean and preprocess the data, ensuring accuracy and consistency.
3. Perform statistical analyses (e.g., correlation analysis, regression analysis) to explore the relationship between test results (metaphor comprehension) and personal indicators.
4. Interpret the results, identifying any significant associations or correlations between test performance and personal indicators.
5. Discuss the implications of these findings, highlighting the potential impact of personal indicators on metaphor comprehension and cognitive abilities in BPD patients compared to healthy controls.
Requirements for the team- Data Visualization – Python, Power BI and Excel;
- Python – Transitions and Operations. Functions, modules and libraries. Lists and tuples. NumPy and pandas libraries;
- Excel – VPR. Summary tables. Functions and formulas. Charts and graphs. Power Query;
- Analytics – AzureML. Learning a scaler from training data, learning a logistic regression model, predicting for a new object, SQL and Excel.