3. Inability to speak spontaneously
Part of the joy of communication is that to all intents and purposes, it feels as though our speech is spontaneous, intuitive and programmed to be able to meet our needs and the needs of other people.
In actual fact, if you boil it down, all speech is planned speech really, it’s just the case that the speed of our neural pathways is so lightning fast that the vast majority of our speech appears to be spontaneous. For this reason, spontaneous speech is best understood as speech that occurs without any clear or explicit planning having taken place, such as that in an unplanned and spontaneous conversation.
People with aphasia may experience extreme difficulty in these situations, as their spontaneous speech is inhibited dramatically due to the slowing of the function of the left-hand side of the brain. This means that their conversational language is slowed right down and it can take a very long time for them to get their message across.