Echolalia

Echolalia is the rote repetition of words, phrases, sentences, or longer chunks of the speech of others. Nonlinguistic vocalizations such as emotional expression, squeals clicks, or environmental sounds are not echolalia. Pure echolalia has been described as the exact repetition of the preceding utterance either immediately or after a brief pause. Echolalia may be either immediate (within two conversational turns of the original) or delayed (more than two conversational turns later and recognizable as a learned routine or of uncharacteristic complexity). Both immediate and delayed echolalia may be exact or altered slightly in specific ways (mitigated). People with autism are often echolalic. However echolalia may occur in typical communication, for example, if one repeats something one is having trouble understanding. Echolalia is also associated with ...