Delayed echolalia?

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Does anybody hear have or had echolalia, especifically delayed echolalia?

I don't have it. But my father does......and he's quiet old (but he has it since I can remember; I'm just saying it's adult echolalia). He likes to repeat phrases he's heard other people say or phrases he's heard on the radio or tv. Sometimes he uses them functionally, sometimes he just repeats them randomly. Quiet often he wants me to end sentences he has been repeating.
He has some phrases that he repeats for years and sometimes the delay is of several years or month, sometimes minutes. So it's very random whether he'll repeat a phrase for years, for months, days or minutes or whether the delay was after years, months, days or minutes.

So I wonder.....how about you?

Yep, my son has echolalia and it appears pretty random - usually it will be immediately after he has heard something but occasionally he will use a phrase from weeks or months ago. Again, sometimes they are random but as he gets older, they seem to be more in context.

And if I end a sentence differently he ends it correctly himself. And if I tell him that it's not nice or logical or ...whatever, he replies that it's not his fault because he didn't say it, it was X-person.

If you have echolalia do you think like this about echolalia or if you know someone, have you similar experiences?

I have echolalia. I have a lot of words and phrases that I've been repeating for years. Sometimes just out of nowhere; sometimes in the context of a conversation. I get your father's wanting you to finish the phrase. I will say something to my mother and she will repeat it - for some reason this is very comforting.

Oh, Thank you very much for that insight. My father is a very enclosed person when it comes to describing emotions.
Now at least I know there are others who do this.
Even when reading literature about echolalia I haven't found anything about this particular variation.
And you mostly also just get to read things about child echolalia.

Anyonen else?

The only time I'd seen the term echolalia was in a novel (Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson - really good book and totally worth a read) and I thought it meant "speaking in tongues". So googling it to figure out what this thread was about was a bit of a revelation.
I repeat phrases from a variety of sources over and over again. Sometimes something in a conversation will cue me to regurgitate a phrase or I'll work a phrase into conversation without a cue. It's interesting that there's a word for this. For me it's not uncontrollable, I just thought it was idiosyncratic use of language. Generally, it's fun and it feels good. Kind of like a verbal stim. Even if the person I'm in conversation with isn't aware, it's still satisfying.

I have echolalia. I had it as a child, and I continue to have it as an adult. I often echo things that other people said or things that I heard on TV. I sometimes echo right after I hear, and I sometimes echo later. In public, I have echoed strangers at the grocery store and teachers in class. I get weird looks for that, but I echo automatically, so I don't have a choice not to do it, only to stop after several echoes. I find that I echo more when I am stressed out, and it feels comforting to me. I often have delayed echolalia when I am alone. I even have echolalia in writing. In stories that I wrote, the characters echo each other during conversations, and one of them echoes to himself automatically, and I wrote those automatically, and the echolalia in writing was not a stylistic choice. It seemed natural to write that way.

I recently read this article about delayed echolalia and found the different types of echolalia discussed in it to be very easy to understand. Oftentimes as far as mentions of echolalia go, I absolutely cannot relate to explicit examples parents or autistic people themselves refer to from their lives. According to this article however, I have a lot of functional echolalia: http://www.iidc.indiana.edu/?pageId=534

There is also another similarly structured article talking about immediate echolalia here: http://www.iidc.indiana.edu/?pageId=535 Some of the exampled mentioned in it I can relate to as well. Again, I found these easier to relate to than reports of cases of immediate echolalia.

Most people seem to take this mildly. Unlike the people I interact with regularly who comment on it often, alternatively correct me during conversations, some of ASD specialists don't notice as they say they never heard echolalia from me (I suspect that they do not expect echolalia in an speaking adult and fail to pay attention to it, seeing how family and friends notice daily).

I quote movies or shows at length. If I quote one character or line of dialogue, I feel like I have to continue as far as I can remember. Sometimes I have to force myself to stop when I'm around people, because even when they find my ability to recite amusing, I'm sure it can get annoying.

I have to work really hard not to do this, I am a little less restrained with family though.

I still often think of things even when I don't say them. I can actually reconstruct the series of mental connections that leads from whatever I was originally thinking about to the text/audio/video clip in my memory, but it would take too long to explain this to anyone so it is usually impossible to do so and show relevance.



I find inaccurate quotations irksome too. I think it's for the same reason I don't like listening to remixed or otherwise corrupted versions of music that I have memorized, it can overwrite the more accurate memories I already have.

Thank you for that insight. Memories as a reson...that is intresting.

I have palilalia- very similar to echolalia except I audibly copy my own words back to myself. It is completely subconscious- I have absolutely no control over it. There is no delay though-it happens immediately after I finish a sentence. It has mostly subsided now that I am older.

My daughter said she has witnessed me doing echolalia as well but I am completely unaware of it.

So wait...you mean there's a name for my tendency to recite lines from movies, etc... at random?

I do this too! My brother used to give me a bad time because I'd sometimes spontaneously whisper a word I said after I said it. I still catch myself doing this from time to time.

I was watching "Law and Order: SVU", which was always a favorite show of mine, with my stepbrother's girlfriend earlier today, and, as always, when the episode came on, I began to recite the opening...you know, "...in New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the special victim's unit, these are their stories. dun dun." Yes, I always do the little sound at the end, too. My brother's girlfriend stared at me the whole time, but then she laughed and smiled. They know I'm a 'character,' and seem to enjoy my company.

Anyway, I always feel the need to recite or sing openings of shows that I like, and when I watch shows and someone says something funny, I always repeat it, as if the other people in the room hadn't heard it. Actually, I do this in conversation with people in real life...if someone says something I find amusing, I feel compelled to repeat it.

Would those things be considered echolalia?

Hmmm...my boyfriend says I repeat words all of the time. Like, if he'll ask me a question, I'll respond, "No, no," instead of just one "no." I don't do this all the time, but I guess I do it enough that he took notice.