Associations between Computationally Derived Parent Emotional Sentiment Scores and Child ADHD and ODD Over Time

Family emotional climate is often assessed as expressed emotion (EE) using the five-minute speech sample (FMSS). Parent EE is related to child externalizing behavior, but the relationship with ADHD apart from externalizing is unclear. We report the largest ADHD-non-ADHD study of EE to date, introduce computational scoring of the FMSS to assay parent negative sentiment, and use this to evaluate reciprocal parent-child effects over time in ADHD while considering comorbid ODD. Parents of 810 children (nADHD = 509), aged 7–13 years old, completed the FMSS at three points. The FMSS was expert-coded for EE-Criticism at Time 1 and Time 2, negative sentiment was scored at all three time points. Sentiment and EE-Criticism were moderately correlated (r =.39, p <.001, 95 • This study is the largest to date to examine the relationship of expert-coded EE-Criticism with ADHD while controlling for ODD. • Cross sectionally, ADHD is associated with EE-Criticism independently of ODD. • Longitudinally, ADHD and EE-Criticism are not related apart from ODD. • Computer generated negative Sentiment scores based on transcripts of the Five-Minute Speech Sample is also related to ADHD and ODD at similar magnitude as EE-Criticism. • showed a significant predictive relationship with ODD symptom change in younger children but not in older children. • The negative Sentiment score was related to ADHD for fathers but not mothers. • Sentiment scores are a potentially useful addition to the tools available to measure parental implicit representation of their child.