 I tell you, get this experience with some kids, they tend to, you know, like you have the whole characterization of being like the little professor, you know, kids with very high levels of intelligence for their age, autistic kids mostly, they tend to pick upon words or phrases from adults around them and they repeat them, you know, and it sounds, it's really funny because when they say them, you just don't expect them to come out with like phrases like that, especially if they're like really, really, really complex. So it's always a really funny thing. From one of the OGs of autism content, Amethyst, who I think has about 70,000 subscribers at this moment, the comments have turned off. This was made nine years ago as if this is from one of one of their Ask an Autistic segments, what is echolalia? And echolalia I think is a really interesting sort of aspect of some people's autism diagnosis that I am really interested in. I have taught a few kids when I was especially in TA who were echolalic and we always had a really fun time just echoing each other back and forth. Let's see what Amethyst has to say about echolalia. Hi everyone, I'm Amethyst and welcome to this week's episode of Ask an Autistic. What is echolalia? This week I'm going to be discussing echolalia, specifically the two main kinds of echolalia, immediate echolalia and delayed echolalia. Immediate echolalia is what most people think of when they think of echolalia. It is the immediate repetition of words or short phrases by autistic people. So immediately after somebody says something to us or we hear it, we repeat it. Immediate echolalia is sometimes misunderstood by non-autistic people. It's been said by non-autistic people that immediate echolalia is a sign of inattention in autistic people. Yeah and I think as well if like some people might take it as like you're mimicking them as like making fun of them sometimes, maybe. I don't know many many people who consider to have like ASD1 who are echolalic but whenever I have got into particularly strong meltdown states sometimes I have like been slightly echolalic and I have in the past with my autistic friends like just done it because it's very stimmy. A sign that we aren't engaged with our environment and even a sign of a lack of intelligence or an inability to learn. Like we're just parrots repeating whatever we hear. Now we know that this isn't true and that it can even be a stepping stone to generating unique or original language speaking in a person's own words. Every autistic person is different so I'm just going to outline a few reasons that an autistic person might use immediate echolalia. The first common use of immediate echolalia is a way to stall or buy ourselves time while we process what was just said to us. If you say something to an autistic person or ask us a question and then expect a response there's a lot that has to happen in our brains for us to be able to make a verbal response. The processing delay is strong with a lot of people. It's quite strong with me to be honest especially like when there is a lot of social and sensory factors going on at the same time. We have to hear what you're saying and then make an effort to understand the language that you use and what exactly is it you're asking of us and then while remembering what it is that you just asked we have to figure out what our response is what we think or feel in that moment and then we have to translate our response into spoken language. Basically describing processing but I do think also like from the last video we're talking about that we're watching you know like the point about masking as well. Imagine adding in as well with with the processing issues adding in like the like self-monitoring aspects of masking it's a lot. So using immediate echolalia repeating the question that was just asked of us or a portion of the of the thing that somebody just said is a way for us to buy ourselves time well at the same time processing what was said to us and giving us time to generate our own answer. A second common reason that autistic people use immediate echolalia is interaction. Immediate echolalia can be a form of expression which I'll talk about next. It can sometimes be like a sort of like a way of saying okay I've heard you you know and I do understand like the processing side of things because I know that personally like by myself if I'm struggling to I think anybody if they're struggling to like think about some things sometimes like verbalizing it into the world can help with that. Does anyone know where amethyst is these days? They seem to suddenly stop posting videos. Yeah I noticed that as well. I mean this was like nine years ago maybe it's I would guess I mean considering that the the comments had turned off I imagine that they probably experienced their fair share of negative sort of backlash like just from being on the internet. Maybe that's why I don't know if anybody else has any idea about that. A way for us to process what we're hearing and to think about what we want to say but it can also just be a way to be present with someone and to interact. If you say to an autistic person I had a really good time at the park today with you and they say I had a really good time at the park today with you it could be that they're just expressing the same sentiment or repeating what you said to show that they are there with you and they're listening and they want to engage with you. A third common reason that autistic people used immediate echolalia and a reason that was actually controversial up until the 1980s is as a form of expression a way to say what we're thinking or to make our needs and desires known something to look out for when you're trying to determine if an autistic person is using immediate echolalia to try to communicate with you or ask for something is to look at their body language. So if you ask an autistic person would you like some more salad and they say would you like some more salad and hold out their plate at the same time then chances are they are answering in an affirmative yes I would like some more salad so it's important to keep an eye out for an autistic person's body language which will give you a clue into if they are expressing themselves or asking for something when they're using immediate echolalia another sign that an autistic person is using immediate echolalia to express themselves or in a communicative way is if they echolalia with slight changes in the original question or sentence so if you ask an autistic person would you like some milk and they respond with would you like some juice chances are they are yes I've seen that a lot as well like with my teaching it's really interesting as well like there was one it's one kid that I was working quite closely with and they would only repeat stuff that I said like after I said it so like they would always because they really like bubbles and like playing with water and stuff and so I was kind of like the fun teacher I was like I'll let them sort of stim away like the first thing you know when they get in from school or getting from home rather in the morning you know give them some kind of regulation time just to encourage them to come in a bit more but they really love like the bubbles that like soap made in the water so they would always kind of you know grab grab my hand and sort of lead me over to the the same place and sort of point to the the soap and say oh you want some soap and then they would say soap like and every every single time they wouldn't they wouldn't say soap like to say you know like can I have some soap they would always lead me over and then they would repeat when I say it so I find it really interesting it's like really curious like how their mind worked around that I know I don't want milk I want juice so there's just three common reasons that autistic people use immediate echolalia as a way to process and bias time while we're thinking about our response as a way to interact and engage with people and as a method of expression to make our needs and wants known but immediate echolalia is also used personally by autistic people for our own reasons and not necessarily to communicate with people around sometimes just phrases I guess like they just sound nice you know when they have a certain flow to them you know it can be quite steamy sometimes certain phrases the use of immediate echolalia can be self soothing if an autistic person is in a new situation or they're stressed or anxious they might repeat comforting or familiar words or phrases to themselves just to to help them get through it and and to process and also as a way to to calm themselves and regulate their emotions immediate echolalia can also be for self stimulation purposes in that it's just fun lots of words are fun or enjoyable to say and autistic people might use immediate echolalia personally as a way to rehearse um as a form of rehearsal I do this quite a bit maybe like like social script like kind of an aspect of social scripting maybe yeah it makes sense like and I think it is definitely one of the reasons what because I used I used to watch Alan Fist's video a lot when I was um a bit younger I think it's kind of their videos came out when the internet was perhaps a little bit quieter when it comes to like the autistic community on youtube um so it was one of like the few content creators that I that I watched um when I was kind of going through my own self improvement journey understanding myself and masking and all that always like they have a really good like insights and points about about certain things it's really interesting if I'm asked a question like are you going to church tomorrow I might repeat quietly to myself a few times are you going to church tomorrow are you going to church tomorrow and this is me rehearsing what I'm going to say or it might be a parent telling their autistic child say thank you for the gift and they might say to themselves say thank you for the gift say thank you for the gift and they could be working themselves up to saying thank you for the gift interesting never come across someone doing that like before or any children in fact when I was teaching interesting but the late echo layer is I think something that I have seen a lot get this experience with with um some kids they tend to you know like you have the whole characterization of being like the little professor you know kids with very high levels of intelligence for their age autistic kids mostly they um tend to pick upon words or phrases from adults around them and they repeat them you know and it sounds it sounds it's really funny because when they say them you just don't expect them to come out with like phrases like that especially if they're like really really really complex um so it's it's always a really funny thing the late echo layer is exactly what it sounds like it's the repetition of words or phrases after a period of time so hours or days or weeks or even years after the autistic person heard the original content delayed echo layer is also often misunderstood by non-autistic people but for a different reason the thing about delayed echo layer is that because a period of time has passed since the autistic person was told or heard the original content the person listening now might not know what they're referencing yeah if they were there originally they might not even remember or they just might not have seen the movie or television show or commercial that the autistic person is echo-lailing from yeah i used to do that with i think there was a there was a reel that i made about like the cow gone adverts like washing machines live long go with cow gone for some reason it just it just it titillates me a lot that that that advert um but i've come across there was this one um particular chap that um i think it was like the end of his sort of uh stay at that's like the special needs school that i worked at and they always used to repeat like phrases around harry potter but i was i really enjoyed like conversations with with that chap because um you know i i would kind of because they had like a particularly like social script around harry potter that they always used to um repeat so i would say like oh harry potter in the chamber of secrets was dumbledore there and they're like yes dumbledore was there in there in the chamber of secrets um and um as our like relationship kind of progressed together and we we we tried quite a bit because he was just like come up to me in the playground and sort of echo lay like like echo lay likely repeat like the same kind of um dialogue um and at one point i i started like asking other questions about harry potter like ones that ones that they didn't um repeat a lot and it was it was really interesting um sort of interacting with them in that way it was really lovely actually so in that way the listener might not actually recognize delayed echolalia as echolalia especially if the echolalia if the repeated dialogue actually fits in the current situation i see this kind of echolalia this delayed echolalia quite a bit in autistic teenagers and adults particularly autistic teens and adults who can generally pass as neurotypical and this is a part of their passing as neurotypical is the use of delayed echolalia and social scripts so this is all very closely tied in with social scripting i mean i don't necessarily think that i do that but you know i could you know there is always an element of language that you pick up from from people that you you watch or listen to you know i don't know if that's necessarily like a common thing for for everybody but if there is a particular word or phrase that i hear about a lot like a lot a lot from someone that i listen to a lot or watch on youtube a lot um it does somewhat worm itself into my own particular dialogue yeah i mean it does does somewhat happen to me but tends to be particular words that just sound nice you know like titillating i've i've heard someone use titillating quite a few times although it's um it's it's someone somewhat induces a sense of embarrassment in me for saying it i i have no idea why i i don't know what you're saying of course like nothing to do with the the word that's hidden within the word let's move on again every autistic person is different but there are a few common reasons that an autistic person might use delayed echolalia one reason is for communication they might use delayed echolalia in a communicative way for example when asked what did you do on the weekend they might respond with don't forget your swimsuit which is something that someone said to them before they went to the pool and so from this the listener might be able to infer that the autistic person went to the pool on the weekend another example would be an autistic person being asked how they feel today and then the autistic person repeating dialogue from a book or a movie that they feel fits their current mood or what they would like to respond with yeah and again this may or may not be identified as echolalia yeah and i found a lot like with the sort of the neurotypical teachers like around me um is that they kind of like pass off this this um sort of alternate alternative way of of communicating as just complete being like completely meaningless but it is really interesting when you do spend a lot of you know time and you kind of you think about it and say why why are they particularly saying saying this thing uh sometimes they're just saying it because it's it's nice and it kind of regulates them and it's part of like like social script but sometimes it does like as amethyst is saying um point to to somewhat like some piece of information that they're trying to get across another common reason for the use of delayed echolalia is for routine or affiliate of completion you may have noticed that at the beginning of most if not all of my videos i start with hi i'm amethyst and welcome to this week's episode of ask an autistic yeah this is a form of delayed echolalia it's kind of funny because this repetition is something that i i guess i do i guess i do then i guess by this definition i i do use a lot of delayed echolalia i think even when i when i started trying to get into doing a bit more streaming uh from doing my podcasts i definitely did find myself accidentally like doing my podcast introduction i originally said so i'm repeating myself but it is a form of echolalia and it's a kind of um comforting routine thing to stick to i don't have to worry about how i'm going to start every video because i can just use delayed echolalia and say what i say at the beginning of pretty much every video so after completing a task an autistic person might say to themselves good job which is delayed echolalia that a teacher or a parent might have said to them a phrase that meant you have just completed a task and you are done now and good job the last example i'll give of a reason that an autistic person might use delayed echolalia is to make their needs or wants known yeah so marvin might ask me is there anything in particular you want to watch today and i might think and say his name is stitch which is a line from lilo and stitch or you might ask an autistic person where they go i do that as well i guess i do my mind is blown i guess i do use delayed echolalia more than i thought i did we're learning a lot today i like to eat and they might sing the jingle or say the slogan of a certain restaurant in this way we're using delayed echolalia to directly express ourselves and make our needs or wants known but sometimes when it comes to the expressive use of delayed echolalia our communication efforts can be hard to decipher for example an autistic person might say do you want some juice when they mean i'm thirsty and not necessarily for juice yeah or okay little amethyst story time uh in my first year at summer camp i went up to the other girls in my cabin and i introduced myself by saying amethyst means the purple stone and what i meant was what are your names but i was using something that i had heard and said before in the present moment to try to communicate and i was misunderstood and in that way it can be frustrating especially for for the autistic person trying to communicate but also for the listener and because autistic people think differently and because our brains make different associations and because sometimes the echolalia and language that we have available to us is limited and that way we can be misunderstood by people it's never happened to me like in a social situation like i've never had that experience myself however like thinking about it even further i probably see that a lot of like the interaction that i have with my dad tends to be a lot of echolalia from films that we both find particularly funny like there's uh this allen partridge there's um a trilogy of films called the naked gun uh which is just absolutely yeah it's actually watched it recently um so funny or uh the big globowski um we tend to repeat a lot of those phrases to each other this one we fancy having a little little laugh together i guess yeah i guess you can sit out to be echolalia too so depending on the context and the situation an autistic person's use of delayed echolalia could very well be an attempt to communicate or to express themselves or interact but again like immediate echolalia delayed echolalia is also used by autistic people just for ourselves personally because it's useful to us or helpful and it's helpful and useful in much the same ways as immediate echolalia it can be self-stimulatory or soothing to us it can be a method of rehearsal allowing us to figure out what we're going to say and becoming more confident before we say it it could be situational and just for fun and that we see a poster of a movie that we really want to see and so we start reciting dialogue from the trailer just because it makes us happy and we enjoy thinking about it and delayed echolalia can be a kind of um what non-assistic people might call talking to yourself a way to process your environment and what's around you and what you're thinking and feeling i wonder um um yeah just thinking about it so i've heard of uh some autistic people talking about like a fantasia you know struggling to um or just having an inability to like have an internal dialogue with yourself it's not something that i experience i suppose maybe there might be instances where you know i repeat stuff in my own head maybe and maybe there's this kind of echolalia that you kind of see on the outside perhaps that's um just some something that people do when they have like more more significant a fantasia maybe just just a thought consideration let's go to the conclusion of this lovely video this has been my video on the two main kinds of echolalia immediate echolalia and delayed echolalia i hope that this answers some questions for you guys and that my examples are useful to you if you have a question that you would like answered in one of my ask an autistic episodes feel free to post your comment in the comment section or message it to me and if you like my videos please do give them a thumbs up and feel free to subscribe to my channel to catch more ask an autistic i hope you guys have an awesome week and thank you for watching my video wonderful video there by amethyst i mean i feel like a lot of people on youtube but especially within the autistic community probably know who they are i mean this video was made like nine years ago really really really good video um brought up a lot of faults and considerations for myself i'm sure it's been helpful to you guys to think about too if you have enjoyed this video make sure to go over to amethyst youtube channel which you know i don't think they've produced videos in a long time but it's always worth going over and giving a like 100% really great video on echolalia