Echolalia

Day 9 of a 30-day series originally published for Facebook April 2021

Echolalia is the phenomenon of repeating words, sentences, or phrases that others have said. It can be a symptom of many disorders, including aphasia, dementia, traumatic brain injury, and schizophrenia, but it's most commonly associated with Autism.

Why do many, children specifically, Autistics do this? First, all children exhibit echolalia at some point. Repeating what others have said is how young children first begin to build language, but they do eventually begin to use that language independently. Since we've learned that Autism is a communication disorder at its core, Autistics rely on echolalia far longer to facilitate communication, to self-regulate, or stim. Have you ever been super nervous and repeated a calming phrase to yourself like "You're ready, you’re prepared, you know what you're talking about." You're using language to calm yourself. Or perhaps to pump yourself up, "I got this! I'm going to rock this presentation, let's do this!"

Immediate and Delayed Echolalia: Immediate echolalia looks like this: "Do you want a drink?" Immediate Response: "You want a drink." Delayed echolalia would be, a child getting thirsty, seeking out mom, and saying, "You want a drink."

Functional and Nonfunctional. Functional Echolalia looks like this: Child seeking out mom when thirsty and saying "You want a drink."

Nonfunctional would look like "You want a drink." after already receiving a drink, or at a random time like, while in the car, watching TV, or on a walk, unrelated to actually being thirsty.

In our house, we experience a LOT of echoing from M. It's exactly how he first began using language, and even today, I would estimate 60% or more of his speech is echoed from either what he's been taught is appropriate language at school, what he's heard on TV, or what he's memorized from a book. Much of the time it is appropriately used, and the rest of the time he seems to do it purely for enjoyment. In particular, he LOVES to recite commercials specifically related to Hasbro games and certain toys. We are often told at Target, "Wow, we should hire him to promote the games!" because he loves to recite the commercials he's memorized for each game that he recognizes.

Echoing is not something we try to "fix" or control. It is harmless, it's a means of communication, and it's often calming or enjoyable.