Talk:Thought disorder

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Wow

This is a horrible and misinformed article, it sounds like whoever wrote it has based their knowledge of mental illness on what they've picked up from watching The Dark Knight 13 times. Don't try to give your own examples if you have no idea what you're talking about. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.226.184.63 (talk) 02:47, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

No seriously, this article reads like an example of Circumferential speech as it's defined here. This needs a clean up, badly. 69.232.239.205 (talk) 07:17, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

^Thirded. It's vague, judgemental, and confusing. 82.9.107.110 (talk) 20:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Forthed, probably. This article reads like it was written by an idiot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.174.11.78 (talk) 17:03, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

My issue with this article is that it doesn't give other explanations for many of these "symptoms". My family has no history of spectrum disorders; stilted speech was just a big part of our humor. More often than not it signified deeper emotions. For example: "I considered the professor's analysis of my endeavors to be somewhat unCOURteous!" is Yankee for, "What a jerk!!") Or it might be facetiously self-deprecating: "This bread pudding is so good!" "Yes, well... widely known, am I, for my delightful day-old delicacies. 'Le Roi de la Pud au Pain!' they whisper in reverence." Which meant, "I'm glad you like it but it's just bread pudding." Etc. etc. Yet again, the internet insists on zebras when horses will suffice. Grammargal (talk) 15:11, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

ELLA'S

ELLA’S COMPETENCY PRINCIPLE "At 6 months of age Ella revealed the brain was just an organ that could collect the right information or the wrong information and usually is assisted by the environment to collect the right information. She did this by demonstrating competency at [say] opening or closing her mouth when tasty or pungent food was offered. She revealed an incompetency at drinking from a cup however. She would grasp the cup, in the same way she grasped a toy, but licked the bottom and sides in preference to drinking from it. By the time she was 12 months old she was competent at drinking from the cup. Furthermore the sides and bottom now did not interest her. A person who has not learnt to be competent is said to suffer from a mental illness to some degree. I consider this attitude to be unprofessional to the point of abuse. For example, try to explain the following:- The dispersion or variation in a distribution, equal to the square root of the arithmetic mean of the squares, of the deviations from the arithmetic mean. In some respects, the reader is like Ella trying to “understand” the cup. It will take quite a lot of effort to be competent to recognize ‘standard deviation’ in its various forms. A lot of evidence is incompetent evidence. Because the omissions, fallacies and manipulations it contains are beyond the comprehension of most people, it often reads like a plausible statement or the reader writes it off as beyond their level of expertise. However, some people do make an inner directed adaption. A person is inner directed when they believe their thoughts, knowledge, values etc., are better than external ones. In a few isolated cases, this is true. For example, whoever said the world was round when the logical uneducated response is to say it is flat, reveals an outstanding level of insight. Most people who are inner directed are or become incompetent to some degree. These people are often stigmatized as mentally ill, instead of diagnosed as having a knowledge deficit". I have not referenced the quote as most dictionaries give the same definition - therefore it does not contain substantial originality, plus it only describes a common mathematical principle {© LEEDS, The Breadperspective 2007}.

Hi there,

I've replaced the original initial sentence of this entry.

In the case of this entry the construction "thought disorder or formal thought disorder is a symptom of psychotic mental illness" suggests a confidence that we do not currently have in being able to define this symptom.

What thought disorder actually is, is an incoherent definition for a symptom of mental illness (see 'Diagnostic Issues' section). Something cannot be a symptom of mental illness and an incoherent definition for one.

Similarly, in science definitions may change over time, may be used in subtly different ways or there may be several competing theories as to what the actualy phenomena really is. Therefore the simpler construction is misleading as it suggests Wikipedia is able to precisely define the term. The term does not adequately define the phenomena, it refers to its general properties of common usage.

"A dog is not a TERM TO DESCRIBE an animal; a dog is an animal" is a little bit of a red herring as 'dog' is a concrete noun and hence the understanding of what it refers to is unlikely to change.

-- [[User:Vaughan|Vaughan]

---

Diagnostic Issues - NPOV

"The concept of thought disorder has been criticised as being based on circular or incoherent definitions. For example, thought disorder is inferred from disordered speech, however it is assumed that disordered speech arises because of disordered thought. Similarly the definition of 'Incoherence' (word salad) is that speech is incoherent."

This doesn't seem to be a valid criticism. E.g., "For example, lack of light is inferred from darkness, however it is assumed that darkness arises because of a lack of light." This is a perfectly reasonable statement. If we have a premise that X arises because of Y, then inferring Y after observing X is valid.--Simoes 07:08, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Idiots. There is no such thing as a NPOV. It is itself a delusional concept, that is as absurd in reality, as the idea of a absolute center of the universe. Position is relative. And so is perceived reality. Therefore, nobody is able to define an absolute true reality, as it does not exist. Not even time and space itself is absolute. The only people who would make a definition like that, are those who are incredibly egocentric and arrogant, and live in the delusion of the whole world revolving around them. I.e. the Wikipedia admins. — 88.77.186.3 (talk) 06:46, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

---

Some of the described language disorders are very common in autism and Asperger Syndrome. A recent study in Finland of adults attending an out patient clinic, 4 to 6 % were newly reassessed has having an autism spectrum condition, a third of those were previously misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. Sz diagnosis are often made on the bases of unusual speech patterns, social isolation and flat effect.

I have AS myself, I’m for example highly tangential. In the book, Eccentrics, Jamie James presented analyses the speech patterns of eccentrics (about half of who imho had AS /autism) and found that half subjectively fitted the language patterns of schizophrenia. On objective analysis, their speech patterns were more obsessive, there was much less derailment and loss of goal than normal individuals and far less than Sz. Even if eccentrics were on the surface highly illogical and tangential (in common with Sz), every eccentric returned to the initial subject question “via a highly circuitous route”. Also, in eccentrics, suggesting they had autism (a developmental delay) used "I" as often as children and many exhibited pronoun reversal, using we instead of "I" or referring to themselves by their first name.

Speech of autistics...

Pressure of speech - V. Common, esp. in High Functioning Autism (HFA)
Distractible speech - Common, often due to special interest, the person collects ties.
Neologisms - Very common
Circumstantiality - Common
Echolalia - Very common, particularly in HFA
Stilted speech - Very common, pedantic speech is thought by some to distinguish AS
Self-reference - Very common, autism is a developmental delay after all
Word approximations - common
Tangentiality - seems tangential but not, obsessive
Loss of goal - less than normal subjects

As such, I would like to see a reference to Autism and it’s speech idiosyncrasies.

Diamond Dave 18:56, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hence my edit condemning this article as it is not an inherent function of psychosis, but it appears in psychotic disorders. This disorder is very consistant with Autism and Autistic Spectrum disorders, and not just psychosis; I'm putting an NPOV tag up on this article for lack of explanation about how this relates to autism, if it does at all, and why it "doesn't" as there might be people out there like me running around doing things in this particular article, and there might be someone thinking that people like me are schizophrenic/psychotic because we go on tangents.

Also, topic of interest, puns: I make a lot of them, and they're very intentional, as I find them humorous. If anything, it should state unintentional punning, for example. Is this a problem of formal thought disorder? Or is it a problem of autistic spectrum disorders? Or is it a sense of humor and little more? More clarification is needed.J. M. 08:26, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi there,

Formal thought disorder typically refers to thought disorder present in psychosis (see books on descriptive psychopathology - I recommend Sims; ISBN 0702026271). This does not mean similar phenomena can't be present in people with other diagnoses, it just means it wouldn't be labelled as formal thought disorder (compare with aphasia). This is also why the criteria include everyday activites such as punning.

Your objection is like saying that you sometimes make actions like a ballet dancer, but as you're a gymnast, the ballet article must be NPOV.

- Vaughan 14:01, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

See, there's something notable here: I'm criticizing lack of criticism into it. Look at ADD/ADHD articles, and look at anti-psychiatry, or dopamine theory of psychosis. I am saying that there are disorders that mimic this, and that it should include mention of things that mimic this for further research and study. Lack of mentioning Asperger's, for instance, is inapproriate even if it doesn't fit the definition. As far as I'm concerned, the comparison is creative, but inappropriate since there are clear understood boundries between a ballet dancer and a gymnast. However, I am stating that the boundries between this and what I suggest, as well as Diamond Dave aren't so clear cut, and there may be studies out there to prove it. If the misdiagnosis on such a scale is true, it suggests-strongly-that this definition is invalid unless it is called "Formal Thought Disorder of Psychosis" and adding "Formal Thought Disorder of Autism" or something, clearly hilighting why it can not be something that's pretty much the same thing or simply scrapped. I would add that several definitions are too limiting, and are very commonly changed. It also is of considerable note that Autism was once referred to as "Childhood Schizophrenia"-not, once again, if Autism is considered schizophrenia (Which it is not and in fact it is very different) then clearly it fits these guidelines, hypothetically. The point is there are clear overlapping traits, though clearly not all traits are in the other (Autistics don't hallucinate based on autism but only if they have another disorder, and schizophrenics don't have these symptoms that mimic negative schizophrenia (alogia, emotional flattening)/formal thought disorder until later in life).J. M. 07:20, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

And I think it needs to be said: You aren't the only one who has an opinion, or even information on this topic and I would caution you from acting as if you are. It is highly insulting and not in the spirit of wikipedia. It is acceptable to prevent wrong information to go in. However, it is unacceptable to remove other people's tags without a discussion of why they're there. As far as I'm concerned, this article is extremely POV because it is extremely selective of what information is in there. It only talks about psychosis and schizophrenia. It doesn't talk about similar disorders, and how it is different aside from the fact it is simply defined as psychosis. If someone is researching something, it might make them miss the correct information as it is censored.J. M. 07:32, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

And, even similar, you mean to tell me that you're such an expert that these disorders can't be all linked? That seems a bit dubious. For instance, lets say I cut my arm and I break my bone. They'll both hurt. But the point is, the problem is ON MY ARM. You can say a cut is a cut and a broken bone is a broken bone, but an arm is an arm. But lets say that the cut is on my leg and my arm is broken. Then it is two different things, distinctly. I don't think there's enough information availible to say why that the causes aren't similar, or possibly the same. That's the point.J. M. 07:37, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi there,

Please add the information that you feel would balance the article (with references please).

- Vaughan 09:26, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Knowledge of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD's) in adult psychiatry is very poor...autism in the 70’s and 80’s was thought to be (when most practicing psychiatrists were educated) a rare and severe “childhood” condition. Beginning in 1981 and particularly after 1994 (with DSM-IV), the understanding of ASD’s has changed radically to encompass a wide spectrum, from severe Kanner’s Autism to a personality type seen in Asperger’s Syndrome (Which now represents 60% of ASD's and ~0.5% of the general population; schizophrenia I believe is 0.5 to 1%?). This realisation is shaking psychiatry to its foundations, it is causing much friction and difficulty. I was told by a psychologist friend (an expert on ASD’s) that the DSM should be thrown away because various personality disorders e.g. OCD personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, social phobia; are various expressions of ASD’s in adulthood. The differing opinions seen in Wiki reflect this change, so lets be patient.

-Diamond Dave - 15/06/2006 15:09 UT

"And, even similar, you mean to tell me that you're such an expert that these disorders can't be all linked? That seems a bit dubious. For instance, lets say I cut my arm and I break my bone. They'll both hurt. But the point is, the problem is ON MY ARM. You can say a cut is a cut and a broken bone is a broken bone, but an arm is an arm. But lets say that the cut is on my leg and my arm is broken. Then it is two different things, distinctly. I don't think there's enough information availible to say why that the causes aren't similar, or possibly the same. That's the point." - Another way of viewing this though is that the FUNCTIONAL impact of your cut and your fracture may be the same, given the location - ie pain, reduced mobility etc. But what you'd do for each injury might be very different, and they may not have had the same cause. It's true that they MAY have, and their being in the same 'place' could make this more likely - but then to further your analogy, if you've been kicked in the arm by a horse and sustain a fracture AND an overlying laceration, that's NOT the same cause as if you fell and broke your arm and then cut your arm with a knife in a separate incident. May look the same, but would have a different cause. Psychiatric disorders may be like that (and given the complexity of the 'machinery' involved they likely have multiple common features) - but there IS the possibility that they just express some similarities in phenotype BECAUSE of the common machinery (ie the brain) that they use. Carly 203.166.230.84 16:57, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

"Thought disorder" vs "Formal thought disorder"

Hi. Thought disorder redirects here, but is "thought disorder" really the same as "formal thought disorder"? My Swedish dictionary of psychology differentiates between two kinds of thought disorder:

• formal thought disorders such as thought deprivation, neologisms and flight of speech; and
• content disorders such as delusions, megalomanic or paranoid ideas, etc.

This website, randomly found with google, says that "Formal Thought Disorder is a Disorder of Thought, but not all Disorders of Thinking are Formal Thought Disorder". What do you think? /skagedal^[talk] 17:37, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi Skagedal,

What you describe is a common distinction made in psychiatry, so you're quite right. However, 'formal thought disorder' is typically abbreviated to 'thought disorder', although perhaps the article should contain some text that warns the reader of this ambiguity.

- Vaughan 20:33, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

You might want to review your thinking on this subject in the light of The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning By Keith J. Holyoak, Robert G. Morrison - specifically but not only based on the heading Defining Thought Disorder and then on the following quote from Kleiger "Apart from the circular conclusion that thought disorder scores tell us that a person has a “thought disorder” or “impaired reasoning,” what do they actually mean in terms of how an individual perceives the world, interacts with others, or feels ..." where he imagines a specific meaning in his Rorschach index. It seems to me that the interpretation of the phrase thought disorder has fallen exclusively under what one might distinguish as thought disorder (psychiatry) or formal thought disorder vs thought disorder (psychological assessment) ... of course this still doesn't resolve the more germane question of whether if a thought disorder is inferred from problems in speech whether the phrase has any epistemological value at all --Suidafrikaan (talk) 21:08, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Knight's move

What's illogical about the way a knight moves in chess? Could we have a better word, please - non-linear, perhaps? --Khendon 21:05, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I've been thinking the same thing. How about "discontinuous"? /skagedal^... 11:40, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Knights Move is the official description of this language error. However, I would like to point out that it very common in Asperger's Syndrome Asperger’s Syndrome, I have witnesses this myself. People with AS are often obsessed with unusually intense and narrow intellectual interests and in conversation they will (depending on how affected they are)...suddenly switch a conversation to their obsession, with little regard to the listener. It is quite jarring and sudden. For example

Me - “how was your day?”, friend with AS – “Fine, I got into college at 10am. Did you see any mechanical diggers? I did, I saw 4 mechanical diggers, I don’t know why workers don’t uses shovels anymore.”

My friends obsession is mechanical diggers but I worry that a psychiatrist unfamiliar with AS would see the Knights Move = thought disorder. My other AS friends are into...the Titanic, The Beatles, films. In all cases conversations switch suddenly to one or between several different subjects. I’m quite disturbed by this, as the Knights Move was said to be a very reliable and unique attribute of a thought disorder. And thus, a good indicator of schizophrenia.

- Diamond Dave- 15/06/2006 15:32 UT

It's important not to get too distracted by the association between formal thought disorder and schizophrenia, as demonstration of the former is NOT pathognomonic of the latter. Bipolar affective disorder (in particular the manic phase) frequently displays phenomena outlined in this article as formal thought disorder, for example circumstantiality and tangentiality - but it is a totally different clinical entity to schizophrenia. Displaying formal thought disorder doesn't automatically earn the label of schizophrenia in the clinical setting, it is more indicative of psychosis in general (with whatever underlying cause). Incidentally pressured speech is often not referred to by clinicians as "formal thought disorder" but thought more to be a sign of the underlying symptom of racing thoughts (commonly described by and found in manic patients). It is also observed in a separate category of the mental state examination (which by one commonly used model goes Appearance/Behaviour, Speech (where pressure is noted), Mood/Affect, Thought (both form and content), Perception, Intelligence/Cognition, Rapport, Insight/Judgement).

I freely admit this is opinion, observation and experience based on study and working as a psychiatric resident at a hospital for three months, but I can heartily recommend reading both the DSM-IV and moreover a great text by Kaplan & Sadoch for accurate but accessible descriptions of the terms and their associations. 203.166.230.84 16:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)Carly

Phonemic paraphasia Example

Can someone explain this to me? "Phonemic paraphasia - Mispronunciation; syllables out of sequence. e.g. "I slipped on the ice broke my arm". What syllables are out of sequence? All I note is the missing 'and'. Did some confused wikiknome 'correct' the spelling? Ed 21:24, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I originally thought what it was saying is that the two sentences "I slipped on the ice" and "The ice broke my arm" got melded into one. But that doesn't fit with the definition at all, and having checked the history of edits, it seems Drrngrvy changed the word "lice" to "ice" on March 28. I'm pretty certain lice was intentional, seeing as it was in the very first version of the article, so I'm changing it back. :) JulianDalloway 15:53, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Syllables out of sequence? Wouldnt that be, for example, like taking the word banana and saying it "nabana" or some such? Muddling up the syllables of a word? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.192.42.69 (talk) 02:10, 20 December 2006 (UTC).

Distinctions, additions, 'see also', redundancies and tabulation

The article could distinguish between:

• disturbance of a) content or b) form (well set out in Kaplan & Sadock), where formal thought disorder refers to the latter
• thought and speech disorders
• thought disorders vs logical fallacies
• thought disorders as symptoms vs formal disorders as identified in DSM-X/ICD-X
• thought, language, and speech

The following list, may help to expand the section on specific subtypes. Some of these:

• already occur in the list but are listed for the sake of completeness
• occur in the text but not in the list
• already have wikipedia entries
• require disambiguation
• need articles of their own, or
• should be included in a 'see also' section.

Annotated list (which is alphabetized)

• Agrammatism
• Akataphasia
• Alexithymia
• Alliteration (psychiatry) vs Alliteration and Assonance
• Alogia
• Anomia vs Dysnomia
• Aphemia vs Mutism
• Asperger’s syndrome (AS)
• Autistic thinking
• Blocking, Blocking (psychopathology), thought blocking and Blocking effect
• Bloviate
• Brain fog
• Cantinfleada or Cantinflassing
• Circumstantial thinking vs Circumstantiality
• Clang associations or Clanging
• Clanging
• Clouding of consciousness vs Brain fog
• Cluttering or Tachyphemia
• Cognitive slippage
• Condensation vs Condensation (psychopathology)
• Confabulation vs (Mythomania or Pseudologia fantastica or Pathological lying
• Coprolalia
• Déjà pensé
• Déjà vu
• Delusions
• Demagoguery
• Dementia
• Depersonalization
• Derailment - vs Derailment (psychiatry), Flight of ideas vs Knight's Move thinking vs Tangentiality
• Derealization
• Dereistic thinking
• Distractible speech
• Doggerel as a symptom of Asperger’s syndrome
• Écho de la pensée - hearing voices that echo one's thoughts
• Echolalia
• Elegant variation
• Fantasy
• Flight of ideas - switching topic mid-sentence or inappropriately
• Gedankenlautwerden
• Glossolalia - speaking in tongues
• Grandiloquence
• Hallucinations
• Hypergraphia
• Hyperlexia as a symptom of Asperger’s syndrome
• Ideas of reference or Sensitiver beziehungswahn
• Idée fixe
• Illogicality
• Illusion
• Impoverished thinking
• Incoherence (word salad) vs Incoherent speech
• Intrusive thoughts
• Jargon aphasia
• Literal interpretation as a symptom of Asperger’s syndrome
• Logic error in programming vs Logical fallacy neither of which, strictly speaking, is pathological
• Logoclonia
• Loose associations vs Asyndesis vs Entgleisen
• Loss of goal
• Magical thinking
• Negative thinking and Negativisim colloquially; not to be confused with Negativism in psychiatry vs Rumination
• Neologism or *Coinages specifically as a symptom of Asperger’s syndrome
• Obsessive thinking
• Odd beliefs
• Palilalia - repeating one's own words
• Paranoid ideation vs Delusion and Paranoia
• Perseveration in speech as opposed to peers such as Palinacousis and Palinopsia
• Phonemic paraphasia
• Pleonasm
• Positive thinking - pop psych
• Pressure of speech - speaking incessantly and quickly
• Prolixity
• Punning or Foerster's syndrome
• Redundancy
• Rhyming
• Rumination - negative cyclic thinking, persistent and recurrent worrying or brooding
• Scanning speech
• Schizophasia
• Self-reference
• Semantic paraphasia
• Speech disorder and the overlaps with some of its types
• Spoonerism eg "I want a tub of not poodles" - should this be added? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.207.159 (talk) 08:18, 9 August 2010 (UTC) See bullet 5 --Suidafrikaan (talk) 20:46, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
• Stilted speech – which is classified as a speech disorder
• Suicidal ideation
• Tangential thinking or tangentiality
• Telegraphic speech or Telegrammatic speech
• Thought insertion
• Thought sonorization vs Gedankenlautwerden vs Echo de la pensee
• Thought withdrawal
• Train of thought
• Unusual juxtapositions as a symptom of Asperger’s syndrome
• Volubility or Logorrhoea or or Loquaciousness vs to wit at least verbal diarrhea
• Vorbeigehen vs Vorbeireden
• Witzelsücht vs Schadenfreude
• Word approximations
• Word play as a symptom of Asperger’s syndrome, and which offers a handy list for distinguishing between quirks of language (e.g. Malapropism and Onomatopoeia) vs thought and speech disorders
• Word salad or Schizophasia or Wortsalat
• Wurgstimme

On the subject of redundancies: Several of these terms are already defined in the arbitrary, nebulous and AfD-worthy wikipedia entry Glossary of psychiatry

Tabulation

We might also consider producing this list in tabular form with a column for the psychiatric illnesses with which these various symptoms are associated.

Suidafrikaan 03:24, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Bullet 5 Consider the following from the present version: "Semantic paraphasia – Substitution of inappropriate word. e.g. "I slipped on the coat, on the ice I mean, and broke my book."" How does this differ from a Spoonerism?--Suidafrikaan (talk) 20:51, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Important point about when it is a disorder and when not!

When you look at the list, you notice that emotional people, and especially women behave like that often. (E.g. “Then there was this guy who… Ooohhh, shoooeees!“ or talking a lot.)
BUT: This does not mean that it is a disorder, nor that those people are ill/worse/inferior/etc!
I am highlighting this, because in the past, this reasoning was used by people of my gender against women, to act as if they were somehow inferior.
The modern view is, that something is only a disease, if it it detrimental to the person having it. Of course as you can see, in most cases most of the listed points are not detrimental but even beneficial behavior. There is a gradient. And diseases usually require an extreme level.
As a very emphatic person myself, and from studying the subject, I know that this is simply a different way of thinking in the non-pathological cases.
For example, there in nothing wrong with suddenly being distracted by something interesting. And when women talk a lot to each other, that is simply a form of showing affection and sympathy.
Unfortunately, it still gets – often deliberately – misinterpreted as a inferiority, sometimes even by women themselves. I think we should therefore make it very clear, that what makes a disorder and what not, is not for the not understanding to judge, but is only definable by those being able to properly judge if it is detrimental. This is also the reason the law is defined in such a way, that you can’t force a mentally ill person to get a therapy, if that person states that he/she is feeling well, and he/she does not harm anybody.
– 88.77.186.3 (talk) 06:41, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Take this to its logical conclusion and one should realise that there are no "disorders" at all, but merely differences from one to the next. As it stands though, it just seems like you're trying to substitute your own subjective values in place of whatever more generalised values were held by the article creator.

Unfortunately perhaps, communication relies on categorisation (which is frequently, if not always, inappropriate and inaccurate) and simplification of data by the removal of details. Which details are key and which are trivial vary from one to the next... but if data is not simplified then it cannot be processed. Or to put it another way: whoever wrote the article probably wasn't trying to offend you or anyone like you, but rather failed to even consider such an eventuality because the thought would have been superfluous at the time... just like if you build a car, you don't usually put in elephant-trampling countermeasures because chances are your car will never be trampled by elephants.

Yes... what this means is that people who "think differently" are inconsequential trivialities to neurotypical society, as no matter what they randomly decide to call us, most of them will never suffer any ill consequences of said choice because we are quite clearly not the majority (and therefore don't really get a say). ~ SotiCoto (talk) 14:01, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Some "symptoms" just a result of "not being an idiot".

I typically find a fairly smooth correlation between a person's apparent intelligence and the effective topic "leaps" I can make in talking to them. Indeed, one can find that more cognitively canny sorts will generally communicate in a more complicated and potentially abstract manner than the simple-minded. Heck, claims of illogical thought patterns seem to rather blatantly indicate significant disability on the part of the listener to fill in the gaps themselves through simple deduction, or else a reluctance to ask or wait patiently for the connector. It is just a levelled-up form of the typical imbeciles who keep demanding I "not use big words".
Just to justify, I may be Aspergian, but a close friend of mine is not and we can communicate quite easily because she is also an intelligent and logical thinker with an expansive vocabulary. Conversely, many others I've encountered have displayed varying levels of bewilderment at my mode of exposition, some to the point where they understood nothing if it wasn't read out to them like a child's first book. ~ SotiCoto (talk) 14:20, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Inability to use Aristotelian logic?

The opening has the following sentence: "However, there is a vague clinical difference between the two. Schizophrenic or psychotic patients are less likely to demonstrate awareness or concern about it [5] because it results from a fundamental inability to use the same type of Aristotelian logic as everyone else does[6] whereas so-called “organic” patients with a clouded consciousness usually do demonstrate awareness and concern about it, by complaining about being “confused” or “unable to think straight” because it results, instead, from various cognitive deficits.[4]"

Schizophrenics have a "fundamental inability to use Aristotelian logic that the rest of us do?" This is nonsense. Aristotelian logic is one form of logical system that used to be used, but has now been superseded by predicate logic amongst logicians, as it was a formal system that had a great deal of problems (for instance, it had difficulties with empty sets). I would be surprised if there was some inability to use this antiquated formal system amongst schizophrenics, or if the typical persons reasoning process in any way actually resembled parsing Aristotelian logical statements (if so, again, there are superior logical systems out there, and they are using a poor one that is really only still taught for historical reasons). Either someone who read this source did not understand what they were reading, or the source itself was just throwing out a hard science concept they had little real understanding of in a thinly veiled attempt to boost their credibility, as is so common among the soft sciences.68.19.233.157 (talk) 02:58, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Self-Reference

The article identifies "inappropriate self-reference" as a symptom of thought disorder, but it links to Self-reference, which is about the general phenomenon of self-reference. Either there should be a separate page for self reference as a symptom of a thought disorder, or this link should just be removed. Nosewings (talk) 18:48, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

INFORMAL THOUGHT DISORDER

© The BreadPerspective, Christine Leeds 2003-2014.“People or animals are 'childlike' and occasionally have an INFORMAL thought disorder. For example, a child thought his skin is brown because he was born in Brisbane. One or more people in his environment challenged his internal belief so reality set in. If beliefs like these are not challenged then they are at risk of developing a FORMAL thought disorder. For example, they might select people who have brown skin. As a consequence, they might regard their next door neighbour as their kin because he has brown skin and not regard their brother as kin because he has white skin. Because other people do not do the same, he is then said to have a mental illness. This is a human/adult problem, in nature animals rarely have mental illnesses” © The BreadPerspective, Christine Leeds 2003-2014. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.108.183.252 (talk) 23:40, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

cofusion of examples

I find it useful that you give examples of a typical interaction with a person with a certian disorder, however It seems that the example of echolalia is acctually an example palilalia. I looked up the articles on both and the example in the article about echolalia is very different from this article. The example on this page goes as follows:

"What would you like for dinner?", "That's a good question. That's a good question. That's a good question. That's a good question."

while the example on the echolalia page goes like this:

a child is asked "Do you want dinner?"; the child echoes back "Do you want dinner?", followed by a pause, and then a response, "Yes. What's for dinner?"

could someone cosider fixing this?--Quiet Wanderer (talk) 00:10, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

I made changes and added to the echolalia definition under the 'Types' subtitle. Jaycar71 (talk) 19:26, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Diagnosis - should be removed

The entire section seems irrelevant. It is composed of 1 section containing nonsense: td is inferred from one symptom. ok, so what? If there is a criticism then what is it? That not all td sufferers have that symptom, or not all those symptomatic have td? Ridiculous nonsense. Another section comments about the potential of misdiagnosis. But td is NOT a diagnosis! Hence the comment seems irrelevant, and of course this fact is the crux of the problem with this section: thought disorders are symptoms of diagnosable disorders, they aren't in and of themselves "diagnoses". The third topic is AS, and is afaics totally irrelevant here, also. SO WHAT if autism correlates to dt? Make a point or remove the language. The basic problem is that this section has no purpose in advancing the article.216.96.76.190 (talk) 17:43, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

• Put some more text that may address some of these problems, except the bit about autism, which is still left there. --Tikmok (talk) 11:55, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

References in the "Types, Signs, and Symptoms" section

One of the problems with references in this section is it's unclear if a reference covers:

1. who classifies the said "subtype" as a thought disorder
2. who defines the subtype
3. who gives an example

I've started tagging references next to the subtype names to indicate who classify the subtypes as thought disorders. Just in case anyone wonders why. --Tikmok (talk) 11:31, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Human Cognition SP23

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 January 2023 and 15 May 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Josefine001 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Serenity D-B (talk) 20:03, 27 March 2023 (UTC)