Derailment

Derailment is speech characterized by a progression of statements or thoughts that are not connected or relevant to each other. Described as a "loosening of association" or tangential thinking, speech exhibiting derailment is composed of ideas or statements that are completely unrelated to each other but are connected as if in a legitimate conversation. Typically occurring in disorders like schizophrenia the language will be structured like normal conversational speech but the components of the dialogue will be unrelated and make little sense. An example of derailment would be "The salad was green as I left the front porch yesterday. My uncle is a nice person and dogs like to swim in rivers when the sky is very cloudy."