This course provides interdisciplinary insight into current research on schizophrenia at the intersection of Psychiatry, Psychology, Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Digital Humanities, Medical Humanities, and Philosophy. People with schizophrenia suffer various kinds of difficulty with respect to social interaction and communication. For instance, they tend to interpret figurative expressions such as metaphors, proverbs, idioms, and irony in a literal and concrete way (this symptom is called ‘concretism’).
The focus of this course is on digital communication. Specifically, we want to find out how patients suffering from schizophrenia interpret ironic or sarcastic utterances in social media and smartphone chats, especially when irony is indicated by emojis (such as 😉 or 😂).
This course instructs its participants to design and conduct scientific experiments on emoji comprehension collaboratively in small teams.
Previous knowledge in Psychiatry, Psychology (especially statistics), Linguistics or Computational Linguistics is desirable, yet no previous knowledge is required to participate. The course is open to students from across all disciplines (natural sciences and humanities) and at all levels (B.A. and M.A).
Language of instruction: German (yet English contributions are welcome)
Seminar hours: Mondays, 18:15–19:45
Venue: Hausvogteiplatz 5–7, Room 0323-26
Institutional affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité – Medical University Berlin
Department of Philosophy, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Contact: benjamin.wilck@hu-berlin.de / ivan.nenchev@charite.de
- Kursverantwortliche/r: Benjamin Wilck