2025 Volume 41 Issue 2 Pages 62-71
The intrusion of visual words into speech, echolalia, perseveration, and recurring utterances are discussed, and their pathogenesis is explored. The intrusion of visual words into speech refers to the incorporation of surrounding text into one's own speech, and it is considered a type of environment-driven response. Echolalia is influenced by the words of the interlocutor and has two aspects: the compensation for one's own speech difficulties through preserved repetition, and the disinhibition of the habit of parroting back words heard. Perseveration is the phenomenon of repeating a response to a previous stimulus, and it also has two aspects: activation failure, which is the inability to produce an appropriate response, and suppression failure, which is the inability to inhibit the response to a previous stimulus. Perseveration and recurring utterances are similar in that they both involve the repetition of the same response, but in the case of perseveration, the content of the response may vary depending on the context, while recurring utterances are characterized by a fixed, unchanging response. It has been pointed out that at the root of such abnormal speech is a desire to overcome speech difficulties and succeed in speaking.
