smolalpacacutie-deactivated2021:
Does anyone else with autism get that brain thing where their mental dictionary just randomly decides to become unavailable? And all you’re left with is describing the word or saying close approximations until someone says it for you?
“The big… Cleaner. In that room.”
“The washing machine?”
“YES!”
this is called anomic aphasia, which ironically i had to type various approximations of into google to remember.
Is… this also a thing in people with ADHD? Because this definitely happens to me.
Yes!
In fact this is not quite a mental illness thing. Neurotypicals also experience this. However, the difference is that in those with ADHD, or autism, it occurs much more frequently, and the cause has to do with the brain, not just slipping on words from time to time.
This can be caused by different things, as studies have looked into this.
Here is the definition of aphasia, from Mayo Clinic:
“Aphasia gets in the way of a person’s ability to use or understand words. Aphasia does not impair the person’s intelligence. People who have aphasia may have difficulty speaking and finding the "right” words to complete their thoughts. They may also have problems understanding conversation, reading and comprehending written words, writing words, and using numbers.“
Whereas in neurotypicals, an occasional flump in word usage can be associated with the brain’s compartmentalization, in aphasia it is caused by the language parts of the brain being affected by an injury or illness, making understanding, speaking, or both more difficult.
Anomic Aphasia is when the brain cannot remember the name of an object. As the wiki page states, ”Anomic aphasia (also known as dysnomia, nominal aphasia, and amnesic aphasia) is a mild, fluent type of aphasia where individuals have word retrieval failures and cannot express the words they want to say (particularly nouns and verbs).“ Basically this means they know what the object is, they can identify and describe what it looks like and does, and even draw it or point it out, but cannot put the proper name to it.
Aphasia is typically associated with stroke victims, head injuries or brain tumors, but disorders that affect language, such as autism, can also cause symptoms of aphasia.
I would absolutely not be surprised if ADHD can also result in anomic aphasia, since Broca’s Area (a location on the left side of the frontal lobe associated with expression through speech) is in the frontal lobe, the part of the brain most affected by ADHD.
Wow, thanks for explaining all of this, it’s super interesting. I have noticed that I seem to get ‘stuck’ and have word finding problems a lot more frequently than your average person.
OH this is why I do that
thank you for the full scientific/linguistic explaination!!
i have to regularly rewrite sentences because im forgetting a word
