People with echolalia repeat noises and phrases that they hear. They may not be able to communicate effectively because they struggle to express their own thoughts. For example, someone with echolalia might only be able to repeat a question rather than answer it. In many cases, echolalia is an attempt to communicate, learn language, or practice language.
Echolalia is different from Tourette syndrome, where a speaker may suddenly yell or say random things as part of their tic. In this case, the speaker has no control over what they say or when they say it.
Repetitive speech is an extremely common part of language development and is commonly seen in young toddlers who are learning to communicate. By the age of 2, most children will start mixing in their own utterances along with repetitions of what they hear. By age 3, most children’s echolalia will be minimal at most.
It’s common for children with autism or developmental delays to have echolalia further into childhood, especially if they’re experiencing delayed speech development. Identifying why and how your child is using echolalia will help you develop a treatment plan for it. Consulting a language pathologist can help.
A behavioral intervention called “cues-pause-point” is often used for intermediate echolalia. In this treatment, the speech therapist asks the person with echolalia to answer a question correctly and tells them they’ll point to them when it’s time to answer. Then, the therapist asks a question, such as “What’s your name?” After a short pause, they prompt the speaker to answer. They also hold up a cue card with the correct answer.
Echolalia is generally defined as the repetition of certain words or phrases spoken by someone else. Although frequently related to other repetitive behaviours echolalia can be distinguished from echopraxia ,which involves motor rather than verbal imitation. Echolalia is a normal part of language development but usually stops by about age 3 when children have more developed language skills. Echolalic behaviors differ within and between individuals along several dimensions or variables .One most often used to differentiate echolalic behaviors is the timing of the response. Immediate echolalia ,is the repetition of words or sentences that are produced either immediately or a brief time after the production of model utterance. Delayed echolalia is the repetition of stored, usually echoic utterance in new and inappropriate contexts. A second variable that differentiate echolalic behaviours is the degree of the similarity between the echo and original utterance. In pure echolalia ,the echo is a precise, literal and complete repetition ;in mitigated echolalia ,the echo is a shortened , lengthened , restructured or otherwise modified version of the original utterance. The echolalic feature in the speech of autistic children is said to be mainly due to a comprehension deficit. It could also be serving as self stimulatory kind of behaviour as they derive pleasure out of it. Echolalia is not common in children with ADHD ,but it can occur. One way it presents in people with ADHD is as a self-stimulation behavior. Existing approaches for intervention have focused on cases with inadequate speech and language and have relied primarily on behavioural techniques using operant principles. Phases of behavioral intervention typically include :elicitation of the non echolalic response through behavior shaping or imitation training; extinction of echolalic responses through punishment, negative reinforcement, or differential reinforcement of incompatible responses; fading out of verbal prompting through anticipation procedures; stimulus generalization and response generalization.
