Logorrhea

Key takeaways

Logorrhea belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Logorrhea to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Logorrhea from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

In psychology, logorrhea or logorrhoea (from Ancient Greek λόγος logos 'word' and ῥέω rheo 'to flow') is a communication disorder that causes excessive wordiness and repetitiveness, which can cause incoherency. Logorrhea is sometimes classified as a mental illness, though it is more commonly classified as a symptom of mental illness or brain injury. This ailment is often reported as a symptom of Wernicke's aphasia, where damage to the language processing center of the brain creates difficulty in self-centered speech.

Characteristics Logorrhea is characterized by "rapid, uncontrollable, and incoherent speech". Occasionally, patients with logorrhea may produce speech with normal prosody at a slightly fast speech rate. Other related symptoms include the use of neologisms (new words without clear derivation, e.g. hipidomateous for hippopotamus), words that bear no apparent meaning, and, in some extreme cases, the creation of new words and morphosyntactic constructions. From the "stream of unchecked nonsense often under pressure and the lack of self-correction" that the patient may exhibit, and their circumlocution (the ability to talk around missing words) we may conclude that they are unaware of the grammatical errors they are making.

Examples of logorrhea When a clinician said, "Tell me what you do with a comb", to a patient with mild Wernicke's aphasia, which produces the symptom of logorrhea, the patient responded:

What do I do with a comb ... what I do with a comb. Well a comb is a utensil or some such thing that can be used for arranging and rearranging the hair on the head both by men and by women. One could also make music with it by putting a piece of paper behind and blowing through it. Sometimes it could be used in art — in sculpture, for example, to make a series of lines in soft clay. It's usually made of plastic and usually black, although it comes in other colors. It is carried in the pocket or until it's needed, when it is taken out and used, then put back in the pocket. Is that what you had in mind? In this case, the patient maintained proper grammar and did not exhibit any signs of neologisms. However, the patient did use an overabundance of speech in responding to the clinician, as most people would simply respond, "I use a comb to comb my hair." In a more extreme version of logorrhea aphasia, a clinician asked a male patient, also with Wernicke's aphasia, what brought him to the hospital. The patient responded:

Is this some of the work that we work as we did before? ... All right ... From when wine [why] I'm here. What's wrong with me because I ... was myself until the taenz took something about the time between me and my regular time in that time and they took the time in that time here and that's when the time took around here and saw me around in it's started with me no time and I bekan [began] work of nothing else that's the way the doctor find me that way ... In this example, the patient's aphasia was much more severe. Not only was this a case of logorrhea, but this included neologisms (such as "taenz" for "stroke" and "regular time" for "regular bath") and a loss of proper sentence structure.

Causes Logorrhea has been shown to be associated with traumatic brain injuries in the frontal lobe as well as with lesions in the thalamus and the ascending reticular inhibitory system and has been associated with aphasia. Logorrhea can also result from a variety of psychiatric and neurological disorders including tachypsychia, mania, hyperactivity, catatonia, ADHD and schizophrenia.

Aphasias Logorrhea is often associated with Wernicke's and other aphasias. Aphasia refers to the neurological disruption of language that occurs as a consequence of brain dysfunction. A patient who truly has an aphasia cannot have been diagnosed with any other medical condition that may affect cognition. Logorrhea is a common symptom of Wernicke's aphasia, along with circumlocution, paraphasias, and neologisms. A patient with aphasia may present all of these symptoms at one time.

Treatment Excessive talking may be a symptom of an underlying illness and should be addressed by a medical provider if combined with hyperactivity or symptoms of mental illness, such as hallucinations. Treatment of logorrhea depends on its underlying disorder, if any. Antipsychotics are often used, and lithium is a common supplement given to manic patients. For patients with lesions of the brain, attempting to correct their errors may upset and anger the patients, since the language center of their brain may not be able to process that what they are saying is incorrect and wordy.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Logorrhea

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Logorrhea claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Logorrhea before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Logorrhea ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Logorrhea

In research: Logorrhea appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Logorrhea in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Logorrhea is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Aphasias, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Logorrhea outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Logorrhea in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Logorrhea means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Logorrhea out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Logorrhea in simple terms?

In psychology, logorrhea or logorrhoea (from Ancient Greek λόγος logos 'word' and ῥέω rheo 'to flow') is a communication disorder that causes excessive wordiness and repetitiveness, which can cause incoherency. Logorrhea is sometimes classified as a mental illness, though it is more commonly classi…

Why does Logorrhea matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Logorrhea?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Logorrhea.