Mental illness repeating phrases
Causes, Symptoms, Treatment, and More
Written by WebMD Editorial Contributors
In this Article
- Echolalia Definition
- Causes of Echolalia
- Symptoms of Echolalia
- Types of Echolalia
- Tests for Echolalia
- Treatment of Echolalia
You may have heard toddlers mimic noises and words when they hear others speak. This repetition or imitation of sounds, phrases, or words is called echolalia. The term comes from the Greek words “echo” and “lalia,” which mean “to repeat speech”.
Echolalia Definition
Echolalia is the repetition or echoing of words or sounds that you hear someone else say. It is an important step for language development in children.
Echolalia can also be a sign of autism or developmental disability in children or neurological problems in adults. These include a stroke or psychiatric disorders like Tourette’s syndrome.
Causes of Echolalia
Children often learn to speak by repeating words that they hear. Echolalia is commonly seen in toddlers during the first 3 years. Echolalia can be a problem if it continues in children older than 3.
Echolalia in children. Echolalia is a sign of autism, developmental disability, or communication disability in children over the age of 3.
It can happen in children with autism spectrum disorders like Asperger’s syndrome. They may need extra time to process the world around them and what people say to them. This causes them to copy or repeat the sounds or words they hear.
Echolalia in adults. You may find yourself repeating the same words you hear in a stressful situation. But you may also have echolalia with neurological or psychiatric problems including:
- Language disorders like aphasia
- Head injury or trauma
- Neurodegenerative disorders
- Confusion or delirium
- Memory loss or dementia
- Brain tissue inflammation or encephalitis
- Tourette’s syndrome
- Learning disability
- Paralysis
- Schizophrenia
- Stroke
- Epilepsy
Symptoms of Echolalia
Repeating phrases, words, or noises that you hear others say is the main symptom of echolalia.
It can also cause anxiety, irritability, or frustration while talking to someone.
Types of Echolalia
Echolalia can be one of two types.
Immediate echolalia. This is when you repeat something almost right away. It can also happen with a slight delay while talking to someone.
Delayed echolalia. This type involves delayed repetition of words hours or days after hearing them. It is usually seen in people with autism spectrum disorders.
Echolalia is “unmitigated” when you repeat someone’s exact words. It can also be “mitigated” if you change them during repetition.
Tests for Echolalia
A speech-language pathologist can identify echolalia as they talk to you. These therapists often test children with autism for echolalia through speech lessons.
The test will tell them where your case falls on a range from slight to severe repetition. Your therapist can identify the stage of echolalia and come up with the best treatment plan for you.
Treatment of Echolalia
The treatment of echolalia depends on the cause of the condition. Professionals who treat it include:
- Speech-language pathologists
- Speech therapists
- Neurodevelopmental specialists
- Psychologists/psychiatrists
- Special educators
Speech therapy.Speech therapy is an effective way to treat autism-related echolalia. A team of therapists observes you and identifies the reason for your echolalia. They then try to understand why you keep repeating words. They also listen to you and respond in a way you understand.
A speech-language pathologist plays a major role in treating autism-related echolalia. They use behavioral techniques, speech therapy, verbal and visual cues, learning methods, self-monitoring, and positive reinforcement.
Medication. Your doctor may prescribe medications such as antidepressants or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors ( SSRIs) if your echolalia is caused by stress, anxiety, or a psychiatric disorder.
They may also give you a specific medication if your echolalia is triggered by neurological conditions such as stroke or epilepsy.
Check with a speech therapist to improve language and communication skills if you or your child has echolalia. You can also try online self-training programs to learn to talk without repeating words. Reading vocabulary and finding different ways to communicate may help you overcome echolalia over time.
Causes, Symptoms, Treatment, and More
Written by WebMD Editorial Contributors
In this Article
- Echolalia Definition
- Causes of Echolalia
- Symptoms of Echolalia
- Types of Echolalia
- Tests for Echolalia
- Treatment of Echolalia
You may have heard toddlers mimic noises and words when they hear others speak. This repetition or imitation of sounds, phrases, or words is called echolalia. The term comes from the Greek words “echo” and “lalia,” which mean “to repeat speech”.
Echolalia Definition
Echolalia is the repetition or echoing of words or sounds that you hear someone else say.
It is an important step for language development in children.
Echolalia can also be a sign of autism or developmental disability in children or neurological problems in adults. These include a stroke or psychiatric disorders like Tourette’s syndrome.
Causes of Echolalia
Children often learn to speak by repeating words that they hear. Echolalia is commonly seen in toddlers during the first 3 years. Echolalia can be a problem if it continues in children older than 3.
Echolalia in children. Echolalia is a sign of autism, developmental disability, or communication disability in children over the age of 3.
It can happen in children with autism spectrum disorders like Asperger’s syndrome. They may need extra time to process the world around them and what people say to them. This causes them to copy or repeat the sounds or words they hear.
Echolalia in adults. You may find yourself repeating the same words you hear in a stressful situation.
But you may also have echolalia with neurological or psychiatric problems including:
- Language disorders like aphasia
- Head injury or trauma
- Neurodegenerative disorders
- Confusion or delirium
- Memory loss or dementia
- Brain tissue inflammation or encephalitis
- Tourette’s syndrome
- Learning disability
- Paralysis
- Schizophrenia
- Stroke
- Epilepsy
Symptoms of Echolalia
Repeating phrases, words, or noises that you hear others say is the main symptom of echolalia. It can also cause anxiety, irritability, or frustration while talking to someone.
Types of Echolalia
Echolalia can be one of two types.
Immediate echolalia. This is when you repeat something almost right away. It can also happen with a slight delay while talking to someone.
Delayed echolalia. This type involves delayed repetition of words hours or days after hearing them.
It is usually seen in people with autism spectrum disorders.
Echolalia is “unmitigated” when you repeat someone’s exact words. It can also be “mitigated” if you change them during repetition.
Tests for Echolalia
A speech-language pathologist can identify echolalia as they talk to you. These therapists often test children with autism for echolalia through speech lessons.
The test will tell them where your case falls on a range from slight to severe repetition. Your therapist can identify the stage of echolalia and come up with the best treatment plan for you.
Treatment of Echolalia
The treatment of echolalia depends on the cause of the condition. Professionals who treat it include:
- Speech-language pathologists
- Speech therapists
- Neurodevelopmental specialists
- Psychologists/psychiatrists
- Special educators
Speech therapy.Speech therapy is an effective way to treat autism-related echolalia.
A team of therapists observes you and identifies the reason for your echolalia. They then try to understand why you keep repeating words. They also listen to you and respond in a way you understand.
A speech-language pathologist plays a major role in treating autism-related echolalia. They use behavioral techniques, speech therapy, verbal and visual cues, learning methods, self-monitoring, and positive reinforcement.
Medication. Your doctor may prescribe medications such as antidepressants or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors ( SSRIs) if your echolalia is caused by stress, anxiety, or a psychiatric disorder. They may also give you a specific medication if your echolalia is triggered by neurological conditions such as stroke or epilepsy.
Check with a speech therapist to improve language and communication skills if you or your child has echolalia. You can also try online self-training programs to learn to talk without repeating words. Reading vocabulary and finding different ways to communicate may help you overcome echolalia over time.
What is echolalia and why is it important?
11.01.13
Causes and the value of one of the most common symptoms of autism
Author: Karen Vang / Karen Wang
Translation: Elizabeth Morozova
9000 and we started trading stories about autism. I told my story, ending with, “And that’s why delayed echolalia is a mom’s best friend!” One of those present did not laugh. She looked confused and asked:
“What is echolalia?”
Echolalia is the repetition of other people's phrases, words or parts of words. Very often, echolalia is a symptom of autism or another neurological disorder, developmental delay, or visual impairment.
Nearly all young children go through a stage at the age of three where they repeat words and phrases they hear "like parrots." This kind of imitation is a normal way to experiment with different sounds and practice social language skills that are just beginning to develop in a child.
This is a normal, and even a critically important stage in the development of speech.
Why does echolalia occur in much older children? What are the functions of echolalia?
In her book Helping Children with Autism Learn, author Brina Siegel writes: “There are two basic forms of echolalia: immediate echolalia and delayed echolalia. The appearance of these two forms shows us how the child is trying to perceive the language.
Immediate echolalia
Immediate echolalia means that the person is repeating what they have just heard. For example, parents say: "It's time to wash in the bathroom", the child can repeat: "To wash in the bathroom." Siegel notes that when a child repeats someone else's words, he demonstrates that he heard you correctly, that he has the physical ability to reproduce speech, and that he can remember enough sounds to reproduce speech. The next step is speech comprehension, and it can take anywhere from a few months to a few years.
Photo: Timothy Archibald.
Echolalia project. The photo shows the author's son, who is diagnosed with autism.
Causes of immediate echolalia
Some adults with autism explain that immediate echolalia is a way of communicating. It's basically a way of saying, "I heard you, but I'm still trying to process what I heard." Immediate echolalia is an attempt to maintain a conversation and give an answer that matches someone else's phrase, even before understanding what was said.
There are ways to improve your listening comprehension. For example, this can be done with visual and tactile support - connecting as many senses as possible improves understanding.
For example, my kids love the story of “Curious George” being splashed by a stink skunk, but no matter how I explained it to them in words, they didn’t understand what the smell was… until one day I stopped the car, lowered window and didn't say, "Boys, that's what it smells like when a skunk splashes." My kids were absolutely thrilled because they finally got it!
Potential risk of a tantrum
It is quite common in the autism community to have a scenario where the cause of the tantrum is a misunderstanding due to immediate echolalia.
An adult asks a child: “Do you want grapes or apples?” The answer is almost always the last word: "Apples." The adult decides that the child really wants apples. The child then starts screaming wildly when given an apple, because the child responded before even realizing the two options, but what he really wanted was grapes. Picture cards or PECS are a great way to offer your child choices or prepare them for change, which helps prevent tantrums.
The need to talk
Siegel concludes: “For most children, immediate echolalia is a developmental stage that begins when they begin to understand the function of words, but are not always able to decode the meaning of a word quickly enough to give a specific and appropriate answer". It is very important to understand that immediate echolalia is an expression of the need to take part in a conversation. More importantly, immediate echolalia expresses a desire to understand and learn a language.
Delayed echolalia
Many people like to memorize and repeat "interesting phrases" or even whole paragraphs, maybe poems, celebrity speeches or funny scenes from movies.
As long as learned phrases are repeated in the appropriate social context, this is considered acceptable social behavior. Delayed echolalia is the repetition of other people's phrases after a long period of time, for example, several minutes or a whole year could have passed from the moment the phrase was heard. These phrases can be repeated anytime, anywhere.
Echolalia - automatic repetition of words and phrases of another person. Echolalia is a normal stage of human mental development when a child tries to repeat other people's words. Typically, this stage occurs between 6 and 9 months of age, although it often goes unnoticed. At an older age, echolalia is often a symptom of various developmental disorders associated with delayed speech development, including autism spectrum disorders, as well as certain diseases or brain damage. Echolalia is so common in children and adults with autism that it is sometimes mistaken for a specific symptom of this particular spectrum of disorders.
There are three possible causes for delayed echolalia.
1. Self-stimulatory behavior
Delayed echolalia is sometimes a self-stimulatory behavior whose sole purpose is to please the speaker. My oldest son always likes to repeat sentences he has read in books. I realized that he was seeing the book in his head, and was simply amusing himself by "rereading" his favorite passages over and over again. The line "George, what's that smell?" obviously borrowed from the book about the skunk "Curious George", which invariably causes Homeric laughter.
He also enjoys repeating clips from his favorite videos as if he were watching them in his head. When used as personal entertainment, delayed echolalia can interfere with real communication. An adult can use this echolalia as a clue to gently switch the child to a more constructive activity.
2. Mood communication
My experience as a parent is that delayed echolalia is often an impressionistic way of communicating one's mood.
If my son says, “The pool is closed today,” it means he is disappointed, and this phrase is his way of conveying disappointment.
His joy and elation are associated with the phrase: “Our room in the hotel is on the seventeenth floor”, he repeats it every time he is happy. If he does not quite understand the content of the conversation, but wants to take part in it, then he pronounces sentences that he associates with the general tone of the conversation.
My strategy in such cases is to recognize his emotions (“I remember how happy you were in the Niagara hotel, I see that you are happy now too”) and redirect him to the real events.
3. Wrapping up the day
Delayed echolalia can also be a way to process memories that haunt you. My son used to come from kindergarten and repeat the phrases and sentences he heard during the day: good, bad and terrible.
He especially enjoyed repeating the teacher's words to children who were misbehaving, he even perfectly reproduced the teacher's intonation: "Kevin, we don't go barefoot at school", "Joey, we touch gently", "Tommy, we don't poke hands in the toilet.
It's not a waterfall."
I felt like I was getting a daily kindergarten radio bulletin. My son communicated with me that the school was loving and supportive and that he liked his teachers and classmates. And that's why, as I've said before, delayed echolalia is a mom's best friend.
Communication and speech
what is obsessive-compulsive disorder - T&P
Anxiety is common to some degree in all people, and many of us sometimes perform rituals of varying degrees of irrationality, designed to insure us from trouble - bang our fist on the table or put on happy t-shirt for an important event. But sometimes this mechanism gets out of control, causing a serious mental disorder. Theories and Practices explains what tormented Howard Hughes, how an obsession differs from schizophrenic delusions, and what magical thinking has to do with it.
Jack Nicholson's character in the famous movie As Good As It Gets was not only a complex character, but also a whole range of oddities: he constantly washed his hands (with new soap each time), ate only with his own cutlery, avoided being touched by others and tried not to step on on cracks in the asphalt.
All these "eccentricities" are typical signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder, a mental illness in which a person is obsessed with obsessive thoughts that make him repeat the same actions regularly. OCD is a real godsend for a screenwriter: this disease is more common in people with high intelligence, it gives the character originality, noticeably interferes with his communication with others, but at the same time is not associated with a threat to society, unlike many other mental disorders. But in reality, the life of a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder cannot be called easy: constant tension and fear are hidden behind innocent and even funny, at first glance, actions.
It’s like a record is stuck in such a person’s head: he regularly comes up with the same unpleasant thoughts that have little rational basis. For example, he imagines that dangerous microbes are everywhere, he is constantly afraid of hurting someone, losing some thing, or leaving the gas on when leaving home.
A leaky faucet or an asymmetrical arrangement of objects on a table can drive him crazy.
The other side of this obsession, that is, obsession, is compulsion, the regular repetition of the same rituals, which are supposed to prevent impending danger. A person begins to believe that the day will go well only if, before leaving the house, he reads a children's rhyme three times, that he will protect himself from terrible diseases if he wash his hands several times in a row and use his own cutlery. After the patient performs the ritual, he experiences relief for a while. 75% of patients suffer from both obsessions and compulsions at the same time, but there are cases when people experience only obsessions without performing rituals.
At the same time, obsessional thoughts differ from schizophrenic delusions in that the patient himself perceives them as absurd and illogical. He is not at all happy to wash his hands every half an hour and zip up his fly five times in the morning - but he simply cannot get rid of the obsession in any other way.
The level of anxiety is too high, and the rituals allow the patient to achieve temporary relief from the condition. But at the same time, the love of rituals, lists or putting things on the shelves in itself, if it does not bring discomfort to a person, does not belong to the disorder. From this point of view, aesthetes diligently laying out carrot peels along the length in Things Organized Neatly are absolutely healthy.
Obsessions of an aggressive or sexual nature cause the most problems for people with OCD. Some begin to fear that they will do something bad to other people, up to and including sexual violence and murder. Obsessive thoughts can take the form of individual words, phrases, or even lines of poetry - a good illustration can be an episode from the movie The Shining, where the protagonist, going crazy, starts typing the same phrase “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." A person with OCD experiences tremendous stress - he is simultaneously horrified by his thoughts and tormented by guilt for them, tries to resist them, and at the same time tries to make the rituals he performs go unnoticed by others.
At the same time, in all other respects, his consciousness functions perfectly normally.
It is believed that obsessions and compulsions are closely related to "magical thinking", which arose at the dawn of mankind - the belief in the ability to take control of the world with the help of the right attitude and rituals. Magical thinking draws a direct parallel between a mental desire and a real consequence: if you draw a buffalo on the wall of a cave, tuning in to a successful hunt, you will certainly be lucky. Apparently, this way of perceiving the world is born in the deep mechanisms of human thinking: neither scientific and technological progress, nor logical arguments, nor sad personal experience proving the uselessness of magical passes, do not save us from the need to look for the relationship between random things. Some scientists believe that it is embedded in our neuropsychology - the automatic search for patterns that simplify the picture of the world helped our ancestors survive, and the most ancient parts of the brain still work according to this principle, especially in a stressful situation.
Therefore, with an increased level of anxiety, many people begin to be afraid of their own thoughts, fearing that they can become reality, and at the same time, they believe that a set of some irrational actions will help prevent an undesirable event.
In ancient times, this disorder was often associated with mystical causes: in the Middle Ages, people obsessed with obsessions were immediately sent to exorcists, and in the 17th century the concept was reversed - it was believed that such states arise due to excessive religious zeal.
In 1877, Wilhelm Griesinger, one of the founders of scientific psychiatry, and his student Karl-Friedrich-Otto Westphal found that the basis of "compulsive disorder" is a thought disorder, but it does not affect other aspects of behavior. They used the German term Zwangsvorstellung, which, being variously translated in Britain and the United States (as obsession and compulsion, respectively), became the modern name for the disease. And at 19In 05, the French psychiatrist and neurologist Pierre Maria Felix Janet singled out this neurosis from neurasthenia as a separate disease and called it psychasthenia.
Opinions differed as to the cause of the disorder - for example, Freud believed that obsessive-compulsive behavior refers to unconscious conflicts that manifest themselves as symptoms, while his German colleague Emil Kraepelin attributed it to "constitutional mental illness" caused by physical causes.
Famous people also suffered from obsessional disorder - for example, the inventor Nikola Tesla counted steps while walking and the volume of food portions - if he failed to do this, the dinner was considered spoiled. And the entrepreneur and American aviation pioneer Howard Hughes was terrified of dust and ordered employees to “wash themselves four times, each time using a large amount of lather from a new bar of soap,” before visiting him.
The exact causes of OCD are not clear even now, but all hypotheses can be divided into three categories: physiological, psychological and genetic. Proponents of the first concept associate the disease either with the functional and anatomical features of the brain, or with disorders in the metabolism of neurotransmitters (biologically active substances that transmit electrical impulses between neurons, or from neurons to muscle tissue) - first of all, serotonin and dopamine, as well as norepinephrine and GABA.
Some researchers have noted that many patients with OCD had birth trauma at birth, which also confirms the physiological causes of OCD.
Supporters of psychological theories believe that the disease is associated with personality traits, character traits, psychological trauma and an incorrect reaction to the negative impact of the environment. Sigmund Freud suggested that the occurrence of obsessive-compulsive symptoms is associated with the protective mechanisms of the psyche: isolation, elimination and reactive formation. Isolation protects a person from anxiety-causing affects and impulses, forcing them into the subconscious, liquidation is aimed at combating emerging repressed impulses - on it, in fact, the compulsive act is based. And, finally, reactive formation is a manifestation of patterns of behavior and consciously experienced attitudes that are opposite to emerging impulses.
There is also scientific evidence that genetic mutations contribute to OCD. They were found in unrelated families whose members suffered from OCD - in the serotonin transporter gene, hSERT.
Studies of identical twins also confirm the existence of a hereditary factor. In addition, people with OCD are more likely to have close relatives with the same disorder than healthy people.
- It started for me at about 7-8 years old. The neurologist was the first to report the likelihood of OCD, even then there was a suspicion of obsessive neurosis. I was constantly silent, scrolling through various theories in my head like "mental chewing gum." When I saw something that caused me anxiety, obsessive thoughts about it began, although the reasons were seemingly quite insignificant and, perhaps, would never have touched me.
At one time there was an obsessive thought that my mother might die. I turned over the same moment in my head, and it captured me so much that I could not sleep at night. And when I ride in a minibus or in a car, I constantly think about the fact that now we will have an accident, that someone will crash into us or we will fly off the bridge. A couple of times the thought arose that the balcony under me would fall apart, or someone would throw me out of there, or I myself would slip in the winter and fall.
