Speech and autism?

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How is your speech affected/not affected by Autism - Asperger?

Experiences?

I do not know exactly. I also have apraxia.

I stutter a lot and get stuck in what I'm going to say. When I was younger I think I had echolalia for a while.

I think it is affected in most ways, just not the same way all the time. I think the biggest problem I have is only talking in one-sentences, not being able to talk to anyone except a family member, and using limited pronouns. Sometimes I talk too loudly, or it comes out as a whisper. When I was younger I was always told I pronounced things funny. Sometimes I think I know too many words beyond what I have the ability to verbally say.

I've never had the problem of walking up to strangers and talking for hours.

I find it quite hard to concentrate simultaneously on what I'm saying, how I'm saying it, and how other people are responding. If I notice someone responding with a negative facial expression, or if I'm unsure of how I'm being received, then I often completely lose track of where I'm going with what I'm saying, and I'll express it badly, or trail off unfinished.

If I become rather animated in what I'm saying, I find it hard to simultaneously monitor volume, and can talk rather too loudly, so that people from around the room turn to look at me.

I can also talk too fast and stumble over words, because in my head is everything I want to say, and it comes out all in a jumble, because I'm not pacing myself properly.

Sometimes I get going too fast and jumble my words, but I don't know if that's AS or not.

When I was little I was "selectively mute" where I basically couldn't (not wouldn't) talk outside the house. That went away at about age 5, but difficulty understanding people stuck. That effects me still in that I don't always know what to say in response because I'm trying to put the pieces together of what the other person just said.

Talking fast and jumbling words is known as 'cluttering', and it is common in (but not exclusive to) people on the autistic spectrum.

Thank you

When I was younger, I used a lot of echolalia and a little modified echolalia and spontaneous speech. I was more likely to speak spontaneously about things in which I had no interest, because if the topic was something of interest to me, I had likely read a number of books and magazines on it and would simply script from those.
Nowadays, I use a lot of modified echolalia (hey, at least it's modified, right?) and also a fair bit of "spontaneous" speech. I put "spontaneous" in quotation marks because it's speech that's self-generated, but that I assemble piecemeal in my head, practising every few words, first silently and then in a whisper to myself. That way, when it comes time to actually say the words aloud to another person, I can just script from my practising. So it's self-generated, but I wouldn't exactly call it properly spontaneous. Either way, it seems to work.
I've always had a very advanced vocabulary (from hyperlexia and, subsequently, a childhood spent reading instead of playing) and been able to speak well on any subject that interested me - partly because I had so much material with which to work and from which to script, and partly because if I was that interested, I cared enough to try. However, I have been known to "clutter" when I talk about a topic of interest. When I'm overwhelmed (sensorily or emotionally), though, I tend to fall silent, to the point where others have to check with me to make sure I'm okay.

I've learned a lot about language over the years. I started out just learning and copying patterns, with the result that my speech was half-scripted and not too good for actual communication. But learning to read did me a great deal of good, because I had the chance to figure out what words were for--not just what you were "expected" to do (i.e., that saying certain words was something you did in certain situations) but that you could use them to get an idea into another person's head. I didn't realize you could do that.

Once I had communicative speech down, somewhere around age four, I still had problems with conversations. Answering direct questions was easy; "lecturing" on one subject was easy. I even learned a new language--English--in a matter of months at age six. But keeping up my end of a conversation wasn't something I was any good at until I was maybe nine or ten.

At about the same age, I also read through an idiom dictionary and learned what an idiom was and how to use it. I stopped taking things so literally.

Because I learned so much of my language from books, I spoke very formally and sometimes got my pronunciations wrong on atypically pronounced words; and I spoke in somewhat of a monotone until my late teens. At that point, I began listening more to style of speech rather than just communication, and familiarized myself with casual speech. I also listened to the way people used tone of voice; since I'm good with music, I realized they were using tone of voice to communicate mood the way that music uses it to communicate mood, and that just like music has phrases, speech has similar phrases not just grammatically but in terms of rhythm and pitch.

Nowadays, I still speak quite formally, use "big words", and sometimes phrase things in unusual ways, but I can communicate quite effectively. I still have problems, ranging from mild difficulty to complete inability to use speech, when I'm overloaded (complete inability is very rare). I also have auditory-processing-related issues that cause me problems with talking to someone over the phone, or having a conversation in a crowded environment. I am still in the "copy the patterns" stage when it comes to tone-of-voice; one day I may deliberately use it to communicate meaning.

I can tend to speak quite formally. If there is extreme emotion, I have a hard time getting my words out at all, sometimes I can become mute for brief periods.

That's interesting. I don't know if it's the same thing, but if I haven't thought out how to explain or talk about something before (and have to do so in real-time) I have a really hard time. What ends up coming out of my mouth is mixed up and full of context-holes, and usually isn't very understandable. The weird part is the thing will be perfectly clear in my mind. It's just that describing it the first time is like trying to pick up something small and slippery with chop sticks.

My speech is very formal, but I like formal speech, better than the type of speech and grammar that I hear, nowadays.

I didn't speak until I was three or four. I had echolia until my teens and didn't know how to have a conversation until adulthood (perhaps I still don't know how but I don't really care). My parents claim I sounded like a loud Ben Stine and/or a robot from a bad 50's B movie.

I had no speech delays, in fact my speech development was advanced, but I was the classic "little professor" as a kid, much better with monologues than give and takes, use of big words, etc. Now it's pretty normal except when emotion is involved, at which point I have extreme difficulty finding words, I often don't express accurately, and sometimes nothing comes out at all.

~Kate

I had no speech delays, however I never fully grasped how to hold reciprocal conversations and still struggle daily with verbal interaction. My mind often becomes so flooded with thoughts, memories, and sensation that I find it difficult to say anything at all.