Chips, cheeks and carols: A review of recurrent perseveration in speech production

During the preparation of this paper, Dr Lyndsey Nickels was funded by an Australian Research Council QE2 Fellowship.

Abstract

Background: Recurrent perseverative errors involve either the complete or partial repetition of a prior response to a new stimulus. They are commonly produced by speakers with aphasia and are difficult to remediate.

During the preparation of this paper, Dr Lyndsey Nickels was funded by an Australian Research Council QE2 Fellowship.

Aims: This paper reviews research on recurrent perseverative errors with a focus on different theoretical accounts.

Main Contribution: Comparisons are drawn between the literature on perseveration in the non‐language‐impaired population and in aphasia. In addition, theories that relate perseverative errors to underlying levels of language processing breakdown are described and contrasted with those that propose that they are primarily caused by impaired inhibition of recent memory traces.

Conclusions: Most recent studies have demonstrated systematic links between patterns of recurrent perseverative errors and underlying levels of language‐processing breakdown in individual speakers with aphasia. For the comprehensive investigation of recurrent perseverative errors the examination of both whole word (i.e., total) and phonological (i.e., blended) perseverations is important, as is the use of case series rather than group designs.

Notes

During the preparation of this paper, Dr Lyndsey Nickels was funded by an Australian Research Council QE2 Fellowship.

1. Wheeldon and Monsell (1994) used the term “lemma” to refer to a level of lexical‐semantic and syntactic information intervening between concepts and phonological forms (Levelt, 1989). The brief facilitatory effect was argued to be localised at a semantic level.

2. While claiming that the programme is designed to manipulate factors known to induce perseveration, the tasks used appear similar to those used to reduce other aphasic errors, e.g., a cueing hierarchy.

3. As Martin et al. (1998) only examined lexical errors, their conclusions are limited to levels of lexical representation.

4. The work of Buckingham and colleagues (e.g., Buckingham, 1985; Buckingham & Christman, 1996, 2004; Buckingham et al., 1978) has also examined the phonetic and stress properties of blended perseverative errors, providing valuable insight into the nature of the structure of the syllable and morphological processing. However, further discussion of these advances is beyond the scope of this paper.