Visualization of Pains Expressed by Onomatopoeia(<Special Issue>VR for Medicine, Welfare, and Healthcare)

Abstract

In medical interviews, Japanese patients often use onomatopoeia such as "zuki-zuki" and "gan-gan" to express their pains or medical conditions. Using onomatopoeia when expressing pain enables simpler and more direct expressions than normal language as well as expresses the quantity (level/intensity) and quality (location/depth) of the pain. However, the subtle differences in characteristics of pain (such as quality), for example between "zeh-zeh" and "zero-zero", are difficult to grasp accurately. Although grasping these differences accurately is said to be critical, it depend on the level of skill of a doctor. So in this study, we constructed a system which supports communication between patients and doctors by evaluating meanings expressed by onomatopoeia. When a user inputs Japanese onomatopoeia, our system estimates quantities and qualities of pains using the relationships between the sounds used in the onomatopoeia and meanings expressed by 35 rating scales such as "sharp - dull", "strong - weak", and "deep - shallow". Visualizing of pains will help to compare between conventional onomatopoeic words such as "zeh-zeh" and novel words such as "zero-zero".