alogia

n. Poverty of speech; an inability to generate spontaneous speech or varied or elaborate responses to questions. Patients with alogia respond to open-ended questions (e.g., "Describe how your mood has been lately" or "Tell me about your childhood") with very limited responses (e.g., "OK" or "It was good"). Alogia is a common negative symptom of schizophrenia. These short responses are not thought to be motivated by a resistance to responding to open-ended questions (i.e., giving limited information as a way of preventing the interviewer from knowing more) but instead are thought to result from a lack of varied or spontaneous responses for whatever reason (e.g., being preoccupied with internal stimuli).   - DGa