Echolalia

[sc134]

Hello there - sorry I'm always asking questions (treading water while waiting for DS's assessment). Please tell me to go and read a book instead if you know a good one, but: what is echolalia, and what is 'normal' repetition of speech?
Examples I'm thinking of: repeating train announcements when playing with toy trains, or bus announcements ("this is number 27 to Chalk Farm") when playing with toy buses. Is that echolalia (not 'normal') or imaginative/pretend playing (key milestone!!)? Or singing the Postman Pat song when playing with toy van? Also, how selective a repetition is echolalia? Example: from the Postman Pat video, remembering a couple of the phrases Pat says and using them in play ('Jess, where are you?'), but none of the voiceover phrases. Shouldn't echolalia be when he repeats sequences, rather than 'choosing'?
And yes, there is a bit of a Postman Pat thing at the moment - the other day we had to stop and stare at postman doing his job until the poor man had to wonder what was going on...

Echolalia is a complex phenomenom which takes many forms. Does your DS adapt phrases for his own purposes or does he only repeat set phrases ? Would he change the name Jess to another name ?

echolalia is such a huge thing.

sometimes professionals like to use the term as a nice label to put on a child's speech.

dd1's speech has often been referred to as "purely echolalic". But it isn't. a lot of dd1's speech is echolalic, but it is appropriate and in context.

so we get a lot of Mr Tumble speak at the moment,

eg "it's a cow. yes, a cow. you say cow" (but this isn't pure echolalia, as Mr Tumble would say "sign" not "say", and dd1 adapts it to whatever she is looking at/playing with/talking about)

I try to divide things up into whether the language used is appropriate or not - but like you I get a bit tied in in whether it is pretend play or not

when dd2 picks up a toy car and runs it along making a brrrmmm noise, it is because she is copying us and we see it as a normal stage of her development (she is 2)

but if dd1 does te same, it is seen by professionals as her "just copying without understanding". equally, when she did the ame thing with a toy carrot I was overjoyed - not just rigidly using a toy for one purpose - flexibility! - but her then SALT jsut said it showed she had no understanding of what she was doing...

soemtimes I think that because dd1 has an ASD label, she can't do right for doing wrong.

Cyberseraphim: well, he adapts some phrases but not others. We never have a bus that's not 27 for some reason, but he can say 'where are you' of other people. Or he will translate some words from within a repeated sentence for me (he's bilingual) - does that mean that he understands at least those words, otherwise he couldn't do the switch over?
Silverfrog: I hear you. Obviously, all language is echolalic to begin with, and as for understanding, I could think of so many 'normal' adults or children who parrot words or sentences they don't really know the meaning of. Your DD1's toy carrot sounds like imaginative play to me: she thinks the carrot is a car (a very eco-one ), and what would be wrong with that? But then, what do I know. My DS has recently decided that his coloured toy pegs are the Teletubbies, yellow is Lala and so on, and they even hug each other by being brought close together. I dread what the experts will make of that one...

sc134, you are going to laugh at this but once more I need to refer you to another thread.

Tclanger (or it might have been totalchaos but I'm pretty sure it was Tclanger) linked to a very full description of echolalia which can be positive or negative. Try a search for Tclanger+echolalia. Again it was from the autumn.

I'm no SALT, but having read this stuff, the echolalia (if that's what it is) you are describing sounds very positive indeed. The great thing is that he is using these phrases in an appropriate context.

I'm sure a child can use his echolalia in imaginative play if that's the best linguistic tool he's got, IYSWIM.

couldn't resist finding it myself.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=special_needs&threadid=656521-Is-Echolalia-always-a-negative-thing#1337 7835

The link is in a post from totalchaos but taken from tclanger's blog which she'd be happy to link you to I'm sure.

You'll see from there that in a way the important thing is not so much "is it echolalia?" but "is a step on the journey to better language or a roadblock?"

IME - normally developing kids do sometimes repeat phrases from the telly etc from time to time - I think that it's the repeating taken together with a form of language delay/social skills delay that means it takes on more significance.

I agree with lingle - there are a lot of forms of echolalia - at 3 DS specialised in a rather depressing form "telly talk"- in that the only sentences he could string together were mindless reproductions of TV programme scripts, said at random moments. But other forms of echolalia can be rather more positive - e.g. repeating back what you just said instead of answering a question (a positive in that the child realises a response is needed and wants to make a response, just doesn't quite get the response right), or using a learnt off by heart phrase in the appropriate context.

With what you describe in play - sounds quite borderline - I would try and encourage slight changes to the announcements/phrases "no I think it's the number 22 bus" or "dog" where are you?

A book I got from the libary about autism called "Giggle Time" had one very useful chapter with ideas about building on echolalia to turn it into conversations.

silverfrog - your experience reminds me of a snotty sentence at the end of DS's joint clinic report - saying that he said hello/goodbye but they didn't know if they were learnt gestures - as surely our job as parents is to try and teach our kids these things if they don't come naturally?

We certainly do repeat things we hear. I do it without thinking about it, if I'm not very careful. Instead of thinking about what I hear, I just say it again. It's sometimes a delay tactic by my brain so it has time to 'unplug' my eyes, ears or some other sense from my brain temporarily and give itself enough room to think about an answer.

Sometimes it's a way to practise what I need to say, or a way to enjoy a phrase I haven't heard before.

I find it useful, but I can see that if children use it just as a habit, it could stop them using words to communicate with other people. Needs a good SALT etc to work out whether they're doing the right things with their repeatings, I guess.

DS2 has quite limited echolalia in that he repeats phrases he's heard word for word, but you can usually work out why he's saying them, even if they're not quite in context. So if you say 'Good morning' to him, he will sometimes reply 'Morning.....post!' .

Silverfrog - yet another spooky similarity: we get the Mr Tumble-speak as well, except that DS2 hasn't yet adapted it to other situations and still says 'sign'. I think it's maybe something about the rhythm of those phrases that he likes.

Our Growing Minds therapist suggested that we use his echolalia and try to make it more flexible. So if, for example, he says 'Morning...post!' I might say ' Postman Pat says 'Morning....post!' DS2 says 'Morning Mummy!'.

Lingle: thank you, that's fantastically useful. You can tell I'm new to MN; I've missed all the past discussions.
Having to learn English when I first came here (already in my 20s, so not young) involved a good deal of echolalia. All of the phrasal verbs ('come on', 'come out', 'come up', 'come round') are really difficult because first they teach you that up means up and round means round spatially, and then they teach you that come up doesn't quite mean come 'up', or come round, come 'round' spatially, IYSWIM. So you just memorize and keep your fingers crossed.
All of the idiomatic expressions have to be learnt echolalia-y, because they don't 'mean' anything; they're just strings of words you learn to say in a certain context. First I had to learn that 'were you born in a barn?' isn't an actual question about one's rural background, but then I assumed it was to be used for all sorts of rudeness. Someone eating with their fingers: 'were you born in a barn?', I'd ask. Someone picking their nose: 'oh, he was born in a barn'. Until someone stopped laughing and explained it to me.
Imagine our poor children having to navigate all that - I'm already so proud that my DS has such a good little proper English accent, like I will never have

That link is dead, lingle

The link worked when I clicked on it. Thanks to the others; I'll try to change the bus number at least (we should take the number 9 to Aldwich sometimes )

Sorry, I meant the link within the link.

sphil - we really have to get the two together at some point! dd1 is driving me nuts with Mr tumble speak at the moment, anyhting and everythng has to be commented on as though she is Mr tumble, eg

me: dd1 & dd2, come for tea
dd1: tea? yes, it's tea. you say tea
me: mmm, come on, yummy pasta.
dd1: pasta? yes, it's yummy pasta. you say pasta.
me: bangs head slowly on wall....

It is good in that she is at least commenting appropriately, but it is one of her more annoying phases, to say the least.

TC, quite. It does annoy me when people write off something dd1 does as "just learnt behaviour". No one says that about dd2, yet she certainly hasn't grasped the intricacies of social greetings, just copies what I say (whereas dd1 willuse one of a selection of hello/how are you/see you later/thankyou, goodbye)).

rhyming books are still banned in our house T.

DS2 used to do "please" when he wanted something. I've not bothered with it since he started learning to actually talk..... we'll get to the point where people actually know what he wants and then they can tell him to "say please" (which he will)

Tclanger: your point about the social niceties is so true, and it's precisely what I was trying to say earlier. Coming to the UK, it was very hard to have to learn all the pleases and thankyous. Some cultures think these things are important, but in other cultures they find them strange.
I want my DS to be well-mannered as much as anyone, but I also know that, if he went all 'please' and 'thank you' back in Italy, they'd probably think he was 'aloof'. Here it's almost as if NOT saying these things means you're aloof. Go figure - maybe it was wrong trying to teach him to kiss the teachers at nursery.
I had a browse through your very interesting blog - your DS is really very handsome, if you don't mind my saying so

Sorry me again, but I've found another link to that article:
sites.google.com/site/autismhome/Home/special-situations/echolalia
it seems to be working.

ds uses it exactly like Amber describes. It's a delaying tactic for him...he also uses it when peopleare trying to rush him on.

I had a hearing test years ago because I knew I couldn't hear against background noise, but it came out fine. It's definitely not the ears that are a problem, it's the brain not having enough ways to hear whilst seeing/moving/thinking. And if you think about it, how do you know whose voice is which if you're at a table of people and several are talking? I bet you listen to the tone of voice. We can't hear the tone, so all the voices are the same and we can't pick out just one of them anyway. It's like listening to ten identical robots all speaking at once (no offence intended ).

The social nuances are a real problem here in France. People constantly think DD is rude because she won't say "bonjour". Even had someone accuse her of being racist . She's FOUR btw!
Interesting now to watch DS learning language as he's doing it in quite a different way to DD. Made me realise how much of DD's early speech was echolalia, just used appropriately/ in the right situation!