RIA/D

Thu, May 24, 2007

Thanks John for bringing this one up.

The Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID) is a coding scheme for text analysis that is designed to measure ‘primordial’ and conceptual content. Primordial thought is the kind of free-form, associative thinking involved in fantasy and dreams. Like Freud’s id, I guess. Conceptual (or secondary) thought is logical, reality-based and focused on problem solving.

RID contains about 3,000 words grouped into categories that are themselves classified as primary, secondary, and emotional. A piece of text is classified by what percentage of its words fall into each category.

In other words in general terms the text analysis apparently maps out how much left vs. right brain activity was occuring in the author/s minds when they wrote/spoke the content.

John also provides a Python tool and Matt Hower did a Ruby version