Alogia

In psychology, alogia (; from Greek ἀ-, 'without', and λόγος, 'speech' + New Latin -ia) is poor thinking inferred from speech and language usage. There may be a general lack of additional, unprompted content seen in normal speech, so replies to questions may be brief and concrete, with less spontaneous speech. This is termed poverty of speech or laconic speech. The amount of speech may be normal but conveys little information because it is vague, empty, stereotyped, overconcrete, overabstract, or repetitive. This is termed poverty of content or poverty of content of speech. Under Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms used in clinical research, thought blocking is considered a part of alogia, and so is increased latency in response. This condition is associated with schizophrenia, dementia, severe depression, and autism. As a symptom, it is commonly seen in patients with schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder, and is traditionally considered a negative symptom. It can complicate psychotherapy severely because of the considerable difficulty in holding a fluent conversation. The alternative meaning of alogia is inability to speak because of dysfunction in the central nervous system, found in mental deficiency and dementia. In this sense, the word is synonymous with aphasia, and in less severe form, it is sometimes called dyslogia.