Coprolalia and decreased motor inhibition in Tourette's disorder: Evidencefrom a lexical decision task

We have tested the hypothesis that patients with Tourette's Syndrome requir e less time to recognize words of a scatological nature than they do those of a nonscatological nature. A lexical decision task was performed with pat ients with TS and a control group. A first list included scatological words and the second comprised nonscatological words. A significant difference w as noted between the neutral list and the scatological list which was attri butable solely to the patients and not the controls. The TS subjects recogn ized words from the scatological list more quickly than they did neutral wo rds. (C) 1999 Academic Press.