Study of verbal automatisms in elderly

A specific language battery has been built up in order to assess verbal aut omatisms in old aphasic patients, in patients with dementia of the Alzheime r type, in Parkinsonians as well as in long-term hospitalized elderly subje cts. Even though the protocol has indeed some imperfections, it yielded dat a and results that are no longer compatible with the notion of "automatic/v oluntary dissociation" such as advocated by Jackson, Baillarger and Alajoua nine. It finally seems that cognitive psychology leads to a new type of int erpretation.