Palilalia and repetitive speech: Two case studies

Palilalia, a disorder of speech characterized by compulsive repetitions of utterances has been found in various neurological and psychiatric disorders . It has commonly been interpreted as a defect of motor speech. This articl e describes palilalia and other variants of verbal repetitive behavior, suc h as monosyllabic iterations and conduite d'approche. The clinical features of palilalia, its prevalence in different language tasks, and the individu al patterns of verbal repetitive behavior are illustrated in two patients w ith a long-standing cerebrovascular disease. An attempt is made to locate t he origin of different forms of verbal repetitions in a standard model of s peech production (Butterworth, 1980a; Garrett, 1980; Levelt, 1989) by analy sis of their morphology and correlation with impairments of lexical or phon ological processes. From these observations it is suggested that palilalia results from control malfunctions at the level of the Articulator, whereas other variants of pathological verbal iterations result from an impairment of the Formulator or from malfunctions of both the Articulator and the Form ulator. (C) 2001 Academic Press.