Help the development of the site, sharing the article with friends!
Echolalia is a disorder in which patients repeat single words, fragments of sentences or even whole sentences they hear from others. Echolalia can be physiological at some point in a child's life, but later it becomes a pathology related to, inter alia, with autism. In adults, echolalia can occur after a stroke or in connection with some dementia disorder.
Echolaliais a quite characteristic problem, because it is related to interpersonal communication. In general, echolalia is defined as a condition in which the patient repeats single words, fragments of sentences or entire statements of other people. Interestingly, in the case of echolalia, a person can not only repeat exactly what he hears from other content, but also can pronounce it in exactly the same tone.
Echolalia - types
There are two types of echolalia. The first isecholalia immediate , where the patient repeats the overheard utterance immediately. For example, a child asked by his mother "do you want to go outside", in a questioning tone, may reply "do you want to go outside". The second type of echolalia isdeferred echolalia , where the patient utters overheard content only after some time - for example (in a completely inadequate situation) statements of the characters from a fairy tale, which the child watched even a few days ago.
Causes of echolalia
Echolalia is found primarily in the group of the youngest patients. It should be emphasized that the occurrence of this phenomenon does not always have to raise concerns that something is wrong with the child. Well, echolalia can be a completely natural stage in a child's speech development. After all, repetition of lines overheard from adults may be the first suggestion that a child is just starting to speak.
When a 12-month-old toddler or a 2-year-old starts repeating simple words or sentences, there is probably no reason to worry. However, the specialist should definitely be visited by the parents of a child who has reached the age of 3 and has echolalia. The cause of echolalia can be both a slowdown in speech development and a much more serious unit in which various communication disorders may occur, including those in the form of echolalia. Speechhere about autism.
Echolalia can also occur in conjunction with psychiatric entities other than autism. The disorder may also appear in children suffering from Tourette's syndrome, occur in the course of schizophrenia in children.
Worth knowingWhat causes echolalia in adults?
Echolalia can be found mainly in children. However, this problem may also occur in adults - there are even more potential causes of echolalia among older patients than in children. In adults, echolalia can be caused by:
- having a head injury;
- stroke;
- epilepsy;
- Pick's disease;
- frontotemporal dementia;
- progressive supranuclear palsy;
- schizophrenia.
How to treat echolalia?
It is quite easy to guess that echolalia significantly disturbs the communication of the patient experiencing this problem with his environment. For this reason alone, the occurrence of echolalia in a patient requires implementation of therapeutic procedures. Psychotherapeutic interactions in the form of speech therapy play a fundamental role in the treatment of echolalia.
For speech therapy to have any effects, it is important not only for the child to work on verbal communication in the therapy room, but also for the child to do it at home with their caregivers. Parents of a child with echolalia receive a variety of advice from specialists on how they can support their child and how they should communicate with them. Important for the therapeutic success in the case of echolalia is, for example, speaking to the child in a varied yet simple language. Among the various methods that can help a child with echolalia, for example, do not complete sentences - starting a sentence and not saying it to the end may indicate that it is time for the child to speak up.
For children with echolalia, it is extremely important that their parents show patience. Treatment of echolalia and other problems in a child (e.g. when the cause of echolalia is autism) can be very long, but showing the child that his parents are angry about repeating different words will not have any positive effect. It can only lead to further problems in the child, such as mood disturbances in the form of lowering it or developing some anxiety disorders.
Sources:
1. L. Sterponi, J. Shankey, Rethinking echolalia: repetition as interactional resourcein the communication of a child with autism, Journal of Child Language / Volume 41 / Issue 02 / March 2014, pp 275 - 304; on-line access: http://gse3.berkeley.edu/faculty/lsterponi/website/Publications/Sterponi&Shankey-Rethinking%20Echolalia.pdf
2. Autism-help.org materials, on-line access: http://www.autism-help.org/communication-echolalia-autism.htm
About the authorBow. Tomasz NęckiA graduate of medicine at the Medical University of Poznań. An admirer of the Polish sea (most willingly strolling along its shores with headphones in his ears), cats and books. In working with patients, he focuses on always listening to them and spending as much time as they need.