Highlights
- •A multi-level discourse analysis examined language in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE).
- •When retelling personal memories, disturbed fluency, cohesion, and coherence emerges.
- •Over repetitions they consistently produce a vague account.
- •This possibly relates to the neurolinguistic demands of recalling personal events.
Abstract
Purpose
Aside from deficits identified in single-word level retrieval, individuals with temporal
lobe epilepsy (TLE) exhibit clinical oddities, such as circumstantiality in their
language production. Circumstantiality refers to the use of language which is pedantic,
repetitive, and overly detailed. This becomes particularly evident when elicitation
tasks impose minimal structure, or when impersonal narratives are retold over consecutive
occasions. Personal reminiscence is highly specific and localised in time, placing
unique demands on cognitive-linguistic systems. It is hypothesised that the nature
of this elicitation paradigm will produce a unique psycholinguistic phenotype in those
with TLE. Among controls there is a compression of output for impersonal narratives,
meaning that they use fewer words over less time and are more fluent. The opposite
effect is observed when personal narratives are retold.
Methods
To investigate the micro- and macrolinguistic processes underpinning personal discourse
production in TLE, we examined the elicited language output of 15 surgically naïve
individuals with TLE and 14 healthy controls. Participants were asked to recall and
re-tell an autobiographical memory on four immediately consecutive occasions, representing
an alternative unstructured elicitation. Following transcription and coding of output,
a detailed multi-level discourse analysis of output volume, fluency, cohesion, and
coherence was conducted.
Results
As anticipated, a distinctly different pattern emerged in TLE when compared with controls
who did not compress their output volume across repetitions but instead produced greater
novelty, and a more coherent and refined account over time. Individuals with TLE consistently
told a less distinct story across repetitions, with disturbances in fluency, cohesion,
and coherence.
Conclusion
This reflects a reduced capacity to produce a coherent mental representation, in all
likelihood related to the neurolinguistic demands of recalling and retelling specific
personal events.
Keywords
Abbreviations:
TLE (temporal lobe epilepsy)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: December 22, 2022
Accepted:
December 22,
2022
Received in revised form:
December 20,
2022
Received:
October 30,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Journal Pre-ProofIdentification
Copyright
© 2022 British Epilepsy Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
