I recently met a person who just can’t shut up.  She chatters endlessly, which wears me out.  I have discussed her tendency to dominate conversations with other people; they have noted the same way about her.   She rarely allows other people a chance to take a turn speaking during conversations.

All of us dread this woman’s invitations to spend time with us.  Perhaps she suspects that we don’t like something about her personality, which is not true: she is truly an intelligent and kind-hearted person.  The problem is only the manner in which she presents herself through conversation.   She has issues related to a sub-field of speech therapy called “pragmatics.”   

Pragmatics refers to both non-verbal and verbal aspects of communication – volume, turn taking, eye contact, attention, asking and answering questions and understanding social boundaries during conversation.

I can’t imagine anyone else spending much time with this person.  Perhaps, someday, she might (if she hasn’t already) seek out a therapist as a result of her social isolation.   It also occurs to me, however, that she might benefit much more from seeing a speech therapist than a psychologist.  I wonder whether psychologists are even trained to identify this serious problem in the artificial confines of a therapist’s office.  It’s out in the real world where this woman seems to express every thought occurs to her, driving others away in the process. 

While she is unintentionally driving others away with her chatter, this woman seems to put her energy into ever higher …

New research reveals even if only one or two members of a group repeats an opinion, it is likely to be seen by others as representative of the whole group. Why does this occur? It boils down to availability and memory.  Compare this to the famous social psychology experiments run by Soloman Asch…