Echolalia

This is attempted communication intended to be interactional, acting as communication with another person.

Examples include:

• Turn-taking: The person with echolalia uses phrases to fill an alternating verbal exchange.

• Verbal completion: Speech is used to complete familiar verbal routines that are initiated by others. For example, if people with echolalia are asked to complete a task, they might say “good job!” while completing it, echoing what they’re used to hearing.

• Providing information: Speech may be used to offer new information, but it may be hard to connect the dots. A mother might ask her child what he wants for lunch, for example, and he’ll sing the song from a lunch meat commercial to say he wants a sandwich.

• Requests: The person with echolalia may say 'Do you want lunch'? to ask for their own lunch.

Non-interactive echolalia is typically not intended as communication and is meant for personal use, like personal labelling or self-stimulation.

Examples include:

• Non-focused speech: The person with echolalia says something that has no relevance to the situational context, like reciting portions of a TV show while walking around a classroom. This behaviour may be self-stimulatory (see 'stimming').

• Situation association: Speech is triggered by a situation, visual, person, or activity, and doesn’t seem to be an attempt at communication. If someone sees a brand-name product in the store, for example, they might sing the song from the commercials.

• Rehearsal: The speaker may utter the same phrase softly to themselves a few times before responding in a normal voice. This may be practice for the coming interaction.

• Self-direction: People might use these utterances to walk themselves through a process. If they’re making a sandwich, for example, they might tell themselves to 'Turn on the water. Use soap. Rinse hands. Turn off water. Dry hands. Get bread. Put bread on a plate. Get lunch meat', etc until the process is completed.