SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS RELATED TO SPEECH AND LANGUAGE

1.    Acataphasia- Disordered speech in which statements are incorrectly formulated. Patients may express themselves with words that sound like the ones intended, but not appropriate to the thoughts or they may use totally inappropriate expression.

2.    Aculalia- nonsense speech associated with marked impairment of comprehension. Occurs in mania, schizophrenia and neurological deficit.

3.    Alogia- inability to speak because of a mental deficiency or an episode of dementia.

4.    Aphasia- any disturbance in the comprehension or expression of language caused by a brain lesion.

5.    Asyndesia- disorder of language in which the patient combines unconnected ideas and images. It is commonly seen in schizophrenia.

6.    Bradylalia- abnormally slow speech. Commonly seen in depression.

7.    Circumstantiality- disturbance in the associative thought and speech processes in which a patient digresses into unnecessary details and inappropriate thoughts before communicating the central idea. It is commonly observed in schizophrenia, obsessional disturbances and certain cases of dementia.

8.    Clang association- association or speech directed by the sound of a word rather than its meaning. The words have no logical connection. Punning and rhyming may dominate the verbal behaviour. It is seen most frequently in schizophrenia and mania.

9.    Cluttering- disturbance of fluency involving an abnormally rapid rate and erratic rhythm of speech that impedes unintelligibly. The affected individual is usually unaware of the communicative impairment.

10.  Copralalia- involuntary use of vulgar or obscene language. Observed in some cases of schizophrenia and Tourette’s syndrome.

11.  Cryptolalia- a private spoken language.

12.  Cryptographia- a private written language.

13.  Dysphasia- (Reception dysphasia) -difficulty in comprehending oral language. (Expressive Dysphasia)-difficulty in trying to express verbal language.

14.  Dysprosody- loss of normal speech prosody. It is commonly seen in depression.

15.  Echolalia- psychopathological repeating of words or phrases of one person by the other, tends to be repetitive and persistent. It is seen in certain kinds of schizophrenia, particularly the catatonic types.

16.  Expressive aphasia or Broca’s Aphasia or Motor Aphasia or non-fluent aphasia- disturbance of speech in which understanding remains but ability to speak is grossly impaired, halting, laborious, inaccurate speech. People with this condition may know exactly what they want to say and understand what they hear others say, but they cannot control the actual production of their own words. Speech is halting and words are often mispronounced such as saying “cot” instead of “clock” or “non” instead of “nine”.

17.  Expressive dysphasia- difficulty in expressing verbal language, the ability to understand language in intact.

18.  Fluent aphasia or Wernicke’s aphasia or sensory aphasia or receptive aphasia- aphasia characterized by inability to understand the spoken word. Fluent but incoherent speech is present. A person with Wernicke’s aphasia would be able to speak fluently and pronounce words correctly, but the words would be the wrong one entirely. For example, “now get me some milk out of the air conditioner, woman!”

19.  Global aphasia- combination of grossly non-fluent aphasia and severe fluent aphasia.

20.  Glossolalia, it is also called “speaking in tongue”- unintelligible jargon that has meaning to the speaker but not to the listener. Commonly seen in schizophrenia.

21.  Holophrastic- using a single word to express a combination of ideas. It is seen in schizophrenia.

22.  Jargon aphasia- aphasia in which words produced are neologistic; that is nonsense words created by the patient.

23.  Metonymy- speech disturbance common in schizophrenia in which the affected persons use a word or phrase that is related to the proper one but is not the one ordinarily used. For example, the patient speaks of consuming a menu rather than a meal, or refers to losing the piece of string of the conversation, rather than the thread of the conversation.

24.  Mutism- organic or functional absence of faculty of speech.

25.  Neologism- new word or phrase whose derivation cannot be understood, often seen in schizophrenia. It has also been used to mean a word that has been incorrectly constructed but whose origins are nonetheless understandable ( e.g., head-shoe to mean hat), but such constructions are more properly referred to as word approximations)

26.  Nominal aphasia or Anomia or Amnestic aphasia- aphasia characterized by difficulty in giving the correct name of an object.

27.  Poverty of speech or Laconia speech- condition characterized by a reduction in the quality of spontaneous speech. Replies to questions are brief and unelaborated, and little or no unprompted additional information is provided. It commonly occurs in schizophrenia, major depression and organic mental disorders.

28.  Lethologica- momentary forgetting of a name or proper noun.

29.  Poverty of speech content- speech that is adequate in amount, but conveys little information because of vagueness, emptiness or stereotyped phrases.

30.  Pressured speech- increase in the amount of spontaneous speech, rapid, loud, accelerated speech, as occurs in mania, schizophrenia and cognitive disorders.

31.  Receptive aphasia- organic loss of ability to comprehend the meaning of words, fluid and spontaneous but incoherent and nonsensical speech.

32.  Receptive dysphasia- difficulty in comprehending oral language, the impairment involves comprehension and production of language.

33.  Paraphasia- abnormal speech in which one word is substituted for another, the irrelevant word generally resembling the required one in form, meaning or phonetic composition. The inappropriate word may be a legitimate one used incorrectly, such as “clover” instead of hand, or a bizarre nonsense expression such as “treen” instead of “train”.

34.  Stereotypy- continuous mechanical repetition of speech or physical activities. It is observed in catatonic schizophrenia.

35.  Stuttering- frequent repetition or prolongation of a sound or syllable, leading to markedly impaired speech fluency.

36.  Syntactical aphasia- aphasia characterized by difficulty in understanding spoken speech. Associated with gross disorder of thought and expression.

37.  Tangentiality- oblique, digressive or even irrelevant manner of speech in which the central idea is not communicated.

38.  Verbigeration or Cataphasia- meaningless and stereotyped repetition of words or phrases as seen in schizophrenia.

39.  Word salad or incoherence- incoherent, essentially incomprehensible, mixture of words and phrases commonly seen in far advanced cases of schizophrenia.

40.  Dysarthria- difficulty in articulation, the motor activity of shaping phonated sounds into speech, not in word finding or in grammar.

41.  Dyslalia- faulty articulation caused by structural abnormalities of the organs required for articulation or impaired hearing.

42.  Logorrhoea or Tachylogia or Verbomania or Volubility- copious, pressured, coherent speech, uncontrollable, excessive talking. It is observed in manic episodes of bipolar disorder.

43.  Hypergraphia- writing style that are unusual, excessive and preoccupied with selected themes.