Echolalic Language

Echolalic Language is the immediate and involuntary repetition of words or phrases just spoken by others, often a symptom of autism or some types of schizophrenia or an infant's repetition of the sounds made by others, a normal occurrence in childhood development. This is something that I found interesting and since we often discuss language and recently discussed autism in class I thought I would share it with everyone. There are two types of echolalic language immediate and delayed. Immediate meaning the child repeats what they heard when they hear it and delayed is when the child repeats something they heard hours, days or months ago. It fascinates me that all children do this and then with most autism children it stays. With some autistic children this type of language becomes functional. They use other tones and lines that they have picked up to express their feelings at that moment. For instance, if they are angry they may use an angry saying from a movie to express themselves. To me this shows an immense amount of intelligence, to be able to relate others people's feelings to their own. They may not seem to understand the sentence but they seem to understand the feeling expressed when utilizing the sentence. This is just an amazing form of communication. Another question that this brings to mind is how does it relate or differ from a 'normal' child who tends to repeat sayings. Are they just fast mapping or do they also understand emotions behind language before they understand language? All of this would be an interesting phenomena to study. Not sure if I would do a structured observation or a balanced amount of case studies. You can read more about this at http://www.spdsupport.org.uk/echolalia.html or http://knol.google.com/k/bryna-siegel/autism/epDokBTC/w3lKYg#