Do you ever have trouble getting words out?

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Yes, often. I'm a very visual person; I'd personally rather draw out what I'm talking about than try to describe things with words. I'm the worst with titles and words and labels. Sometimes my friends have these moments, so I don't think too much about mine. But it really worries me when it happens excessively.


Same here. I'm very into language, and it is important to me that people understand my message -- simply giving them the gist of things isn't enough for me.

I'm actually a speech language pathologist, and I work every day with people with aphasia (I work in a rehab hospital and probably 75% of my caseload is patients with left-hemisphere strokes- and yes, some have very mild deficits). You can't just say, oh someone has word-finding problems, therefore they have anomic aphasia. You can have word-finding problems for reasons which have nothing to do with aphasia. Aphasia is a specific type of language disorder (or group of language disorders), associated with lesions in specific areas of the brain, and is usually caused by a stroke, traumatic brain injury, epilepsy, etc. I am aware that developmental aphasia exists, but the types of language problems you get with autism are not considered aphasia. I've worked with people with autism as well, and I can tell you that the manifestation of language problems in autism and the expression of language problems in aphasia are different. It may be hard to know that just from reading about it online, but trust me, they are not the same, and any speech pathologist would tell you the same. It's not really a good idea to self-diagnose just based on on-line descriptions of disorders for this very reason. Broca's aphasia, which is you mentioned, is a very distinct and obvious clinical entity with specific manifestations. Conduction aphasia, which you also mentioned, is also extremely distinct, is very rare, and in fact it is debated whether or not pure conduction aphasia actually exists. Again, you really cannot diagnose something like this just from reading a description online (or without clinical training).

yeah i known for that!

Huh, you learn something every day.

Just out of curiosity, what is different between nominal aphasia and what the OP mentioned? I understand that clinical aphasia is caused by brain damage after birth, but isnt an abnormal brain formation resulting in problems an accurate description for both autism and brain damage? I really dont see a huge difference other then how the damage was caused, but the end result seems similar to me.

Yes I do this a lot. I get really excited about explaining something but the words don't come out right and I get mental blanks.
Also, before I was 14 I barely spoke to people, so I didn't know I had this problem until I was 16.

Last edited by pensieve on 30 Mar 2009, 9:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've always had that problem of finding and then saying the word that I had lost in mid-sentence; and often when I do finally find and say the word, it isn't the correct one. For example, I'll say the word ghost for toast; I'll call my son by my brother's name; and my daughter by her mother's name.

I'm actually going to bed now, so I can't write too long a reply, but I'll just try to give you a quick idea of how brain damage can be different from a developmental disorder:

I thought of a metaphor which might be helpful. Picture a brick wall. It had once been a whole, perfectly functional brick wall, but now a large hole has been punched though it, while the rest of the wall is largely intact. This is analogous to the case of someone who had a stroke with a focal lesion. In another case, the wall was put together poorly- some of the bricks are misshapen, in some places the mortar is too thin, and in others it is too thick. I'm not trying to offend anyone, but that is my analogy for a developmental language disability. And then again, what if a third brick wall had been affected by an earthquake, and had some cracks and crumbling spread thoughout its once intact frame, but no areas have been completely destroyed, as in the first example. That might be like someone who has had a closed head injury with diffuse damage. None of these brick walls are normal, and none of them function normally, but under stress they will behave differently from each other, and they will all have their own strengths and weaknesses.

The point that I am trying to make, is the specific structural damage that has been done, affects how the wall performs. Really, connections in the brain are more like a type of web (according to one popular model), with one word being connected to others with varying strengths depending on how they are related (similarity in form, similarity in meaning, category, personal associations, etc.). The more connections a word has, and the stronger they are, the easier it is to activate this word. Maybe someone with a traumatic brain injury has very disrupted verbal organization and categorization skills (these are needed for instance to realize that a "couch" is a type of "furniture"). This is going to limit some of the types of connections which will be able to activate words, and make retrieval more difficult. Maybe someone else has a developmental speech or language disorder, and has an impoverished vocabulary in addition to phonological processing problems. They also might have word-retrieval deficits, but for a different reason, and the manifestation will not be exactly the same. Then again, maybe someone had a stroke, and many of the connections to particular words were pummeled out of existence by tissue death. Again, they are not likely to exhibit the exact same pattern or manifestation of difficulties. I'm not even taking into account here the difference between retrieving a semantic description of a word (what it means) and retrieving it's phonological pattern (how it's said), both of which are necessary for successful word retrieval and both of which can be disrupted separately. Bear in mind that this is a very simplified description, and as such, is not particularly accurate, but I'm just trying to give you the idea.

When examining word-retrieval deficits, you also look at other cognitive and linguistic problems (like comprehension deficits, decreased fluency, impulsivity, etc.), all of which are likely to impact the person's functional ability to recall words in conversation. You also look at which strategies are most helpful for a person. If you give them the first sound, are they able to recall the word? Are they able to write the word, but not say it? Will they recognize the word if you say it? The kind of damage which occurred will affect how successful different strategies will be for a person. Also, you need to look at the kinds of errors they make in retrieval. Does the person just pause while they try to think of the word? Do they substitute a vague word like "thing?" Do they substitute another word (like "cat" instead of "dog")? Do they make pronunciation errors ( like "cart" for "car")? And do they *realize* that they have made these errors? All of these factors affect both diagnosis and treatment.

So, there is no simple answer to your question, no "word-finding deficits in aphasia look like this, and word-finding deficits in autism look like this," but rather there are a multitude of factors which impact a disorder and it's diagnosis. And definitely some of it depends on the person's medical diagnosis- because developmental disabilities, even when they have some traits in common with brain damage (for example, nonverbal learning disabilities and right hemisphere syndrome), DO present differently from brain damage. The type of abnormality is just different. Someone with two broken legs can't walk, but neither can someone with paralyzed legs from spinal cord damage, or someone with severe cerebral palsy. It's the same thing with brain damage- superficially similar results don't indicate similar etiologies, similar prognoses, or similar intervention strategies.

Last edited by LostInSpace on 30 Mar 2009, 10:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This has been a problem for me all my life but it never worried me until I was an adult (I guess I never talked that much before!). Actually it is more than just losing the word, it is a feeling of vaugness. It has nothing to do with intelligence as I am doing very well at uni. The words just slip away and nothing comes in their place. Then I have to struggle to communicate what I am trying to say. It worries me a little for when I have finished my studies and become a teacher.

Always.

Yes, well ... what was the topic again?

Yes, I do this too. It doesn't bother me since I know I'm not alone in this matter. My therapist told me to script out situations before I get into them. That helps a little bit.

Usually what happens to me is I am into a sentence, and then...oops...the word(s) sort of leave me. So I stop mid-sentence. That creates an interesting conversation.

Try googling Semantic-Pragmatic Disorder, I have it and I know exactly what you mean.

The Missus and I both do this, sometimes we get stuck when neither one of us know what the other is trying to say. She uses the word 'thing', as in we need to decide what we're going yo do about the pink thing. I usually go for the German-string-descriptive-words-together-until it makes sense.

I'm like that, in most conversations I can't get my words out, I'm like "so I said to her that um, that thing what um *mubley noise"* get what I mean?" them: "no"

That was very long for a "quick idea" what are your long replys like then lol

Yep, I get that all the time. It's like my brain freezes when I realising I'm talking.
It used to be much worse when I was very young. I had a lot of trouble retrieving words and applying words to their meanings. I had a perfect idea of what it was I wanted to say, but I either couldn't find the word or would replace it with another. I also had (and still do have) extreme difficulty with remembering names and I used to get he/she/they confused a lot.