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...

i was thinking of ds recently in terms of the little duckling who will imprint itself on the first moving thing that it sees. with ds it was as though he linguistically "imprinted" himself on the television rather on us, though i'm not sure why that would be.

he would copy huge chunks of tv talk, but never copy anything that we said. he can still be very repetitive with tv talk, but it is not as continuous as it used to be. looking back on the worst times seems a little foggy as it was difficult to think clearly at the time. not sure if he was deliberately creating a constant hum of talk to block other things out, or just as a form of stimulation.

his spontaneous language is much better now, though much of it has developed from learned phrases, they are not so easy to spot now.

{grin] at mr tumble talk: we've had that too.

dd (10 months) is just getting to the stage where i am beginning to see differences in her development compared to ds's. she will copy any little noise or action that we make (in a good way, i think!) while ds rarely mimicked us; only the telly.

what a blether i am!

tclanger: i'm sure your ds became less and less inclined to smile at his stalker!

Thanks to Lingle and the others for the link to article (which I eventually found): already started to apply some of the things suggested last night. So, DS was playing with his train "to Heathrow terminals 4, and 1-2-3". DH said, "yes, DS, but what if I want to go to terminal 5?". And DS gets up, looks at him, and says: "this train is going to heathrow terminals 4, and 1-2-3, AND FIVE!" (with wide grin). That's good, isn't it?? I mean, it's still echolalia, but he also wants to communicate

Yup, that's definitely communication

sc134 - I think what you are reporting is in the normal range of communication and not autistic echolalia - IMO

That article is really helpful, thank you

Would some of DD's speech fit into the category of echolalia? (I think it does)?

Egs:

When she doesn't want to go home, she says "Bye bye Mummy's house" frantically, even if we are miles away from it. (In the summer she was really distressed if we went near our house on a journey so if we were driving past it I tried to reassure her that we weren't going home but just had to drive past the house by saying 'bye bye house' on the way past once).

If we take her to, say an appointment, so leave her sister with my Mum & Dad to babysit, she always goes through a routine of saying "Not Jasmine, not Grandad, not Nanny...Just DD, Just Mummy..." It does change in that it is appropriate to the set of people who are staying or going, but the format stays the same.

Are these " Utterances used as a processing aid, followed by utterance or action indicating comprehension of echoed utterance"?

Another:
When she is climbing on the sofa edge, she often says "Be careful, DD, faalll" as she does. But she still does the clearly very dangerous thing. It is what we say to her when we try to discourage her from climbing, but she has started saying it as a phrase to accompany her climbing.

Is this "Utterances which serve to regulate one's own actions. Produced in synchrony with motor activity."?

I have been trying to get across to the SALT (only seen twice, and not likely to see again ) and the Paed how 'formulaic' some of her interaction is, but they don't seem to understand me and just say "but it is meaningful."

It is meaningful, but it is like an 'interaction recipe card'.

Lou: I've seen SO many children (including, obviously, my own) do something like your DD's 'Be careful', or do something they know they shouldn't and then say to themselves 'No, DS, naughty!' Because many parents laugh when that happens (well, at least I do), I think they feel reinforced and just keep doing it.
Ever since reading the article and the other posts, I've been trying to modify DS's repeated speech by inserting some variations, or making it more 'personal', which seems to be working (e.g. DS does the bus announcement when playing with toy bus, if I say 'Let's go home, DS', he now announces the bus stop of where we live. Will that get him a job with London Transport? )
I think echolalia is a phase that almost all children go through - but then it depends whether for them it's a form of communication or something else, and whether they switch from that to predominantly non-repetitive language. Perhaps the SALT and Paed are not worried because your DD is still rather young? I don't know, I'm waiting for assessment myself

Lou, if it's any consolation, the interaction recipe card gets to have several thousand recipes on it if we keep learning. She's definitely applying her words to the situation and changing them accordingly, which I think is very good. As for the sofa, she may speak out loud as a way to remind herself to be careful too. If I have something very important to remember, I have to say it out loud otherwise it doesn't register properly?

Thank you both - useful perspectives.

The paed has sent his usual follow up letter that arrives after an appointment. He noted our concerns, but says that she has global development delay (he has never used 'global' before) and that she is making progress. He feels she is more interactive since last time. He says that there is nothing that points strongly to ASD from his observations.