Article on echolalia

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.