Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

We’re constantly looking for ways to spot early signs of problems such as depression or bipolar disorder, based on the idea that the earlier we can spot signs the earlier we can intervene.   Traditionally in psychology this has relied on asking people to monitor themselves and report back. Lots of problems inherent in this e.g., lack of motivation, lack of awareness, not knowing what to look for, self-fulfilling prophecies, etc. Psychology research is often hampered by lack of more objective ways of collecting information that don’t rely so much on self-report of individuals.   New methods are emerging which look at how someone’s pattern of typing on a smartphone keyboard might predict early onset of depression.   Firstly – rest assured this isn’t some new and frightening emergence of big-brother watching your keystrokes! For this research people had to download a specific keyboard to use with their phone that feeds back results to researchers about their typing patterns, it didn’t capture the