The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

Full Text of this Article
in Japanese PDF (69K)

ArticleTitle	Syllalia -simultaneous speech of the same spoken by the conversational partner
Language	J
AuthorList	Kazuo Hadano¹⁾ and Mari Higashikawa²⁾
Affiliation	1) Shiga Mental Health Center 2) Rehabilitation Center in Eisei Hospital, Hachiohji
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 21 (4), 235-242, 2005
Received	Apr 30, 2004
Accepted	Feb 21, 2005
Abstract	"Syllalia" is a compound word coined by Hadano et al. (1985, 1987) consisting of "syn" (simultaneous, same) + "lalia" (speech). Careful clinicians have observed that a patient with severe global aphasia sometimes speaks simultaneously the last part of the word or phrase spoken by his conversational partner; however, the patient can not speak spontaneously or independently what he spoke simultaneously with the partner. An example of our observation follows: a patient could not react verbally at all to the examiner's command of "Please say your name". Then, the examiner said slowly to him "Your name is Hashimoto Noboru" and the patient said, simultaneously, "Moto Noboru" (underline indicates the simultaneous speech of both). Subsequently, the examiner commanded "Please say your name once more", and the patient could not say anything, including his name that he had simultaneously spoken just before. Syllalia is automatic speech induced in a state of severe global aphasia, which is the loss of voluntary, propositional and intellectual language, produced by an overall destruction of the perisylvian language area in the left hemisphere. In this paper, we report five cases of syllalia caused by cerebral vascular diseases and consider the mechanisms underlying simultaneous imitation behaviors from neuropsychological and development psychological points of view.
Keywords	syllalia, echolalia, co-action, automatic speech, global aphasia