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Symptoms
of Tourette's in Depth
RANGE OF SYMPTOMS OF (TS):
MOTOR:
Simple Motor Tics:
- fast, darting, and meaningless.
Complex Motor Tics:
- slower, may appear purposeful.
VOCAL:
Simple Vocal Tics:
- meaningless sounds and noises.
Complex Vocal Tics:
- linguistically meaningful utterances such as words or phrases.
EXAMPLES OF MOTOR TICS:
Simple Motor Tics:
- Eye blinking, grimacing, nose twitching, lip pouting, shoulder
shrugging, arm jerking, head jerking, abdominal tensing, kicking,
finger movements, jaw snapping, tooth clicking, frowning, tensing
parts of the body, and rapid jerking of any part of the body.
Complex Motor Tics:
- Hopping, clapping, touching objects, throwing, arranging, gyrating,
bending, biting the mouth, the lip or the arm, headbanging, arm
thrusting, striking out, picking scabs, writhing movements, rolling
eyes upwards or side-to-side, making funny expressions, sticking
out tongue, kissing, pinching, writing over-and-over the same
letter or word, pulling back on a pencil while writing, and tearing
paper or books.
EXAMPLES OF VOCAL SYMPTOMS:
Simple Vocal Tics:
- Coughing, screeching, barking, grunting, gurgling, clacking,
whistling, hissing, sucking sounds, and syllable sounds such as
"uh uh," "eee," and "bu."
Complex Vocal Tics:
- "Oh boy," "you know," "shut up,"
"you're fat," "all right," and "what's
that."
Rituals:
- Repeating a phrase until it sounds "just right" and
saying something over 3 times.
Speech Atypicalities:
- Unusual rhythms, tone, accents, loudness, and very rapid speech.
Coprolalia:
- Obscene, aggressive, or otherwise socially unacceptable words
or phrases.
Palilalia:
- Repeating one's own words or parts of words.
Echolalia:
- Repeating sounds, words, or parts of words from others.
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Types of "Tics" ::

There are 2 main types of tics, motor and vocal tics.
Those two can be broken down again, into groups called simple
tics, and complex tics. The graphs at the left show examples of
each kind of motor and vocal tics.
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