ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to compare a college population of subjects with a history of sleep-talking to a control nonsleep-talker group. Sleep-talking, unaccompanied by other major psychopathology or organic disease, apparently tends to occur less often after the age of 25. Where somniloquy is secondary to some other process pathological or otherwise, it is likely that its course will reflect the vicissitudes of the process. Sleep utterance was virtually eliminated rapidly with no recurrence reported at the time of a 9-month follow-up. G. Andriani had observed sleep vocalization in so many people who seemed otherwise “normal” that he deemed it valid to call the subspecies “common” sleep-talking. Andriani indicated that sleep-talking might occur in normal people possessing a “nervous temperament”; and A. Moll noted an association between sleep-talking and normals with a “sanguine temperament”. Sleep-talking is a common accompaniment of many functional and organic psychiatric syndromes but shows no predilection for any specific nosological subgroup.
