Hi daisydiana...Echolalia is meaningful communication and easily translated if you look at the total context in which echolalic statements are uttered, rather than taking them at face value and perceiving them to be meaningless.
An example of echolalia:
When visitors arrived at a young autistic boy's home over the school holidays, he started demanding a biscuit. The visitors were not meant to be there from his perspective and he drifted off his chosen task of watching Postman Pat on tv and became agitated, all the while demanding "milkyway biscuit". His mother waited for him to be relatively quiet and then directed him back to the task he was meant to be doing: "You're meant to be sitting on the couch, watching Postman Pat!" in a calm and pleasant voice.
Demanding a "milkyway biscuit" actually meant "I am anxious, make me safe mum!" Why? Because he associates his mother(as his primary carer in the family) with food, safety, and so on. This particular boy had no insight into his emotions and cannot describe what he feels directly, but still feels anxious. Hence he throws out "milkyway biscuit" as a way of getting his mother's securing attention. (He would happily eat a biscuit too, but that is a secondary issue.) In this case it is delayed echolalia, but it is still functional communication from his perspective. To focus on the biscuit as the issue is to miss the point. In most cases, you have to look at the background/setting issues to get the hidden message in the echolalia. Many echolalic utterances will be about safety and security from the autistic person's perspective.
13 Feb 2007, 6:19 pm
