Echolalia

Principles for responding to echolalia

- Create opportunities to initiate communication - Determine the function - Use low-constraint interactions - Avoid solely teaching a rote set of "functional" or survival utterances - Practice language use with peers. - Teach quiet behaviors

Non-interactive functions of echolalia examples:

- Immediate- non-focused, rehearsal, and self-regulatory - Delayed- non-focused, situation association, and rehearsal

Gestalt language development "Natural Language Acquisition"

- Six stages of language development - typical language development progression for many people with ASD - begins with pure echolalia/gestalts

Other disorders that can present with echolalia

- Tourette's syndrome - Aphasia - Schizophrenia - Dementia - Catatonia - Epilepsy - Stroke - Language Impairments

Variables Associated with Higher Incidences of Echolalia

- Unstructured or unpredictable situations. - Transitions - Unfamiliar tasks or situations - Difficult or challenging tasks - Contexts that cause anxiety, fear, distress, and/or elation. - Stimuli that were presented in modalities in which the child is hypersensitive (e.g., audition, tactile, kinesthetic, vestibular, and/or visual

Interactive functions of echolalia examples:

- immediate: conversational turn-taking, answering questions, and requesting - delayed: turn taking, providing information, labeling, protest, request, and calling attention

Three echolalia interventions:

1. Cues-Pause-Point 2. Script training and visual cues 3. Differential reinforcement of lower rates

Script Training and Visual Cues

Targets delayed echolalia - Script training uses written out scripts with pictures to help teach a person what is an acceptable communication exchange for a situation - Scripts address a particular social situation - Prompts are gradually faded so the client has to provide more and more of the language of the script on his or her own

Cues-Pause-Point

Targets immediate echolalia - Show cue card and have child say what is on the card - Pause and hold up index finger to indicate "quiet" - Ask question - pause - point to card and ask what is on it - Praise and acknowledge correct reply

What is echolalia?

The socially awkward or inappropriate verbatim repetition of part or all of a previously spoken utterance

T/F: echolalia is most common in children and adults with ASD

True

2 types of echolalia

immediate and delayed

Gestalt

remembering and producing language as a whole unit that has one communicative intention