Autism and Echolalia
(Repetitive Speech) – Questions and Answers - Craig Kendall, the author of The Asperger’s
Syndrome Survival Guide
Your child is repeating
movie and TV scripts all day, and showing all the signs associated with autism
and echolalia. What should you do? Should you be worried? Not quite, says some
language and autism experts who discuss the topic.
First of all, what is
echolalia? This is when a child with autism will either repeat back to you what
you have just said, or what they heard someone say earlier, or they will repeat
seemingly random lines from kid’s TV shows or movies that they have heard.
This may seem, at first
glance, like totally non-functional communication to you. It may seem very
frustrating, because you’re trying to talk to your child and all you’re getting
back is seeming nonsense. It probably will have you worried for your child’s
development.
Scripting, Autism and Echolalia
But actually, if you
look closer, these seeming nonsense statements are actually quite full of meaning.
Kids with autism who have echolalia will often do something called “scripting,”
which is repeating scripts from TV shows or movies. They do this because they
don’t have the language skills or ability, yet, to come up with their own
language. But, they have learned that they can express a need or a feeling by
matching it to the thousands of statements they have stored in their head from
watching things like Blue’s Clues, Dora the Explorer or other such things.
Emotions are easier to
understand on exaggerated kids’ shows. Therefore, kids with autism may be able
to understand the language easier and due to their great memories, save it for
a time when they need it. This is what happens with autism and echolalia.
So, if you hear a
bizarre statement that doesn’t seem to quite fit, see if you can recognize it
from one of the shows your child watches. For example, one mother gave the
example of a kids’ TV show where one character is tired of the other and says
“I’m going to go read in the bathroom!” Her son uses it to express the feeling
of “I’m done with this; I want to be by myself.”
The actual words in an
echolalic statement don’t really matter. They are just placeholders for the
emotion being expressed. So her son doesn’t actually want to read OR go to the
bathroom – he wants to go off on his own. You kind of need to know the original
show it’s from to understand what’s being said, but it’s far from nonsense
language. You can ask “Where is that from?” to try to get more clues about the
origin and meaning.
Autism and Echolalia – Should I Discourage this
Behavior?
Many parents wonder,
Should I be trying to stop my kid from using echolalia? Should I ignore him and
try to coach him out of it? They want their child to be more “appropriate” and
more easily understood by the outside world. But the answer is no – no, you
shouldn’t. Language does not come easy for many kids with autism. Any attempts
at all at language should be rewarded and appreciated.
It has actually been
shown that echolalia is a positive indicator that the child will gain
functional language. But, like all other things for a child with autism and
echolalia, it will just come much later than their peers.
Echolalia is part of a
“gestalt” system of learning language. That means language is learned gradually
and absorbed from the environment, until one day it all just seems to coalesce
and make sense, or at least more sense. This is as opposed to the more
analytical, word by word form of language learning that most typical kids turn
to by the time they’re of school age. This doesn’t work nearly as well for most
kids with autism.
Autism and Echolalia – Echolalia as a
Developmental Step in Building Language
Echolalia can come in
two forms, immediate and delayed. Immediate echolalia is when the child repeats
something you just said instead of giving a response. If this happens, be
patient. At least there is an attempt to communicate. You may want to reinforce
verbal skills by having pictures of different choices and feelings for them to
point to. Know that if you say something like, “Do you want juice or milk?” and
the response is “Or milk,” it doesn’t necessarily mean they want milk. They’re
just repeating the last part they heard. Try turning it around and asking it
the other way. Sometimes you’ll just have to guess.
Delayed echolalia is
when the child repeats something from movies or TV, or something they heard
earlier.
Eventually they get
better at choosing the right script for the moment so that you might not even
know they were scripting if you weren’t already familiar with the scripts. Then
that turns into “modified echolalia,” where they will sometimes keep the basic
structure of the script but replace it with words that are more appropriate to
the situation. Names will be swapped out for the people actually in the
situation; descriptions will be closer to what is actually going on.
After more time goes on,
this will usually lead to some sort of spontaneous language. It will start with
only a few words at a time, but eventually it will evolve into several word
sentences. Scripting provides a good base for the child with autism to learn
about the structure of and use of language until they have acquired enough
skills to use it on their own, according to many accounts of autism and
echolalia.
When Does Echolalia Occur?
Even after there has
been some language development and ability to use language independently, kids
with autism may still script when they’re feeling particularly stressed out or
anxious. The scripts are comfortable and familiar and it takes some of the
stress off of them. Also, they may be used when the kid just plain doesn’t know
the answer or how to answer.
A lot of kids with
autism don’t know how to say “I don’t know.” Sometimes this is teachable.
Gather together a series of questions that may be commonly asked in daily life
but that you don’t think they will know the answer to. Model to them how to say
“I don’t know.” Prompt the “I don’t know” after each question. You may even
want to reward them with a small token after each “I don’t know,” and then
graduate to rewarding only when it is spontaneous. This will, at the least,
make communication about some things a little easier and also more
comprehensible to those not familiar with the scripts.
Typical kids and babies
coo and babble when they are toddlers and just beginning to learn how to speak.
They are trying to imitate what they hear and what is going on around them
before they can put it all together. The only difference is, with autism, it
can take longer – much longer – for this to happen.
But for many kids it
WILL happen, and using echolalia is a natural step to learning language. If you
are patient and reward their efforts, if you try to get into their world and
respond to them, you will find that autism and echolalia doesn’t have to be
quite the volatile mix that you might have thought it was going to be.
