 |
 |
I believe in PD automatic or so-called overlearned activities are frequently damaged or inaccessible or highly vulnerble to breaking down kind of motor programs. These are the kind of activities that can be performed automatically without conscious attention - like the kind of walking one can do while reading a book or carrying on a conversation at the same time. It is also very often still possible to do these activiti= es when they are cued in such a way so as to make the activity non-automatic= i.e. so that they require conscious attention. For example walking over lines. Ordinary handwriting is also an automatic or overlearned activity= and thus frequently falls apart. However, if writing is done in a fashio= n so as to make it non-automatic, requiring conscious attention (say for example writing letters from the bottom up or writing with the opposite from nomally used hand, then this activity can be performed satisfactorily. = Disarthric or garbled speech follows a similar pattern. If one does something to take out the automaticity of speech and make it a conscous a= ct then very often normal speech results. For example, try saying it in pi= g latin (make up your own). Or as a more socially acceptable solution try two word couplets where a sentence is spoken in two word increments with slight pauses between each group of two words. = regards, Tom