Tangential speech or tangentiality is a
communication disorder in which the train of thought of the speaker wanders and shows a lack of focus, never returning to the initial topic of the conversation.
[''Forensic Aspects of Communication Sciences and Disorders'' by Dennis C. Tanner 2003 page 289] It tends to occur in situations where a person is experiencing high anxiety, as a manifestation of the psychosis known as ''
schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social wit ...
'', in
dementia
Dementia is a disorder which manifests as a set of related symptoms, which usually surfaces when the brain is damaged by injury or disease. The symptoms involve progressive impairments in memory, thinking, and behavior, which negatively affe ...
or in states of
delirium.
It is less severe than
logorrhea and may be associated with the middle stage in
dementia
Dementia is a disorder which manifests as a set of related symptoms, which usually surfaces when the brain is damaged by injury or disease. The symptoms involve progressive impairments in memory, thinking, and behavior, which negatively affe ...
.
It is, however, more severe than
circumstantial speech in which the speaker wanders, but eventually returns to the topic.
Some adults with
right hemisphere brain damage
Right hemisphere brain damage (RHD) is the result of injury to the right cerebral hemisphere.American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (2015). ''Right hemisphere brain damage''. Retrieved from http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/RightBr ...
may exhibit behavior that includes tangential speech. Those who exhibit these behaviors may also have related symptoms such as seemingly inappropriate or self-centered social responses, and a deterioration in pragmatic abilities (including appropriate eye contact as well as topic maintenance).
[''Perspectives on Treatment for Communication Deficits Associated With Right Hemisphere Brain Damage'' by Margaret Lehman Blake 2007 page 333]
Definition
The term refers simplistically to a
thought disorder
A thought disorder (TD) is any disturbance in cognition that adversely affects language and thought content, and thereby communication. A variety of thought disorders were said to be characteristic of people with schizophrenia. A content-though ...
shown from speech with a lack of observance to the main subject of discourse, such that a person whilst speaking on a topic deviates from the topic. Further definition is of speech that deviates from an answer to a question that is relevant in the first instance but deviates from the relevancy to related subjects not involved in a direct answering of the question.
[P. J. McKenna, Tomasina M. Oh ][Tali Ditman & Gina R. Kuperberg ] In the context of a conversation or discussion the communication
is a response that is ineffective in that the form is inappropriate for adequate understanding. The person's speech seems to indicate that their attention to their own speech has perhaps in some way been overcome during the occurrence of cognition whilst speaking, causing the vocalized content to follow thought that is apparently without reference to the original idea or question; or the person's speech is considered evasive in that the person has decided to provide an answer to a question that is an avoidance of a direct answer.
History
The earlier
phenomenological description (Schneider 1930;''et al.'') allowed for further definition on the basis of formal characteristic rather than content, producing later practice relying upon
clinical assessment (Andreasen 1979). The term has undergone a re-definition to refer only to a persons speech in response to a question, and to provide the definition separation from the similar symptoms ''loosening of association'' and
derailment
In rail transport, a derailment occurs when a rail vehicle such as a train comes off its rails. Although many derailments are minor, all result in temporary disruption of the proper operation of the railway system and they are a potentially ...
(Andreasen 1979).
Other
According to the St. Louis system for the diagnosis of schizophrenia, tangentiality is significantly associated with a low IQ prior to diagnosis (AU Parnas ''et al'' 2007).
See also
*
Aphasia
Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in t ...
*
Theories of communication
*
Circumstantial speech
*
Harold Lasswell
References
{{Reflist
Aphasias
Symptoms and signs of mental disorders
Communication disorders