Echolalia in high functioning adult

Post Reply New Topic

Can you have echolalia as a high functioning adult? I'm constantly repeating sentences in my head from movies and other media that I listen to. Is it 'echolalia'? or is it just my own thing.

uh, maybe? I quote TV shows and movies too (and did so as a kid too). I am prone to going nonverbal if I am very upset or excited, and can struggle to find words if I am even just a little nervous. When I'm in a nonverbal episode, I can repeat back words that I've just heard, but can't remember the words for things on my own. I worked this out with my wife, who now knows to ask me yes/no questions if I look like I've gone nonverbal or are struggling. I've also been told I'm a very good mimic for non-human sounds like sound effects or animal noises (which is entertaining at parties) and I have perfect pitch. I think these are all related.

It certainly can exist. I had echolalic speech as a young kid and today I have moments where I catch myself either repeating what I said or what someone else said.

I do this with pleasantries and it drives me crazy. Probably because I know a response is required quickly and I haven't had time to think. It makes me sound like a moron - someone will routinely say "hi how are you today?" And I'll literally repeat "hi how are you today?" Back to them.
Grr.
I also do the thing you describe and repeat the same sentence or groups of words over and over, but manage to do that in my head.

I only occasionally make use of glossolalia as an high functioning autie.

Yep...I sometimes sound stupid when I speak according to a "script."

Sometimes, I repeat what somebody else has said--though I speak low enough for that person not to hear the "echo."

I'm not sure that's echolalia. Ain't repeating quotes from movies/shows in your head a bit like having a song stuck in your head? It is for me.

I am a high functionning adult.

I don't think repeating movie quotes in your head really is echolalia since you don't actually speak and don't actually repeat what has been told. But I often repeat stuff in my head too, whatever it is the list of the countries I visited or the seven classic lightsaber combat forms from Star Wars. It helps me calm down and focus when I feel overwhelmed.

On a different topic, I sometimes do something that I think can be described as echolalia when I am talking with some people who say things I can't make any sense about, often emotional reactions about other persons. I will just repeat the last words they said because I don't understand what I could say or am supposed to say.

According to Wikipedia it's defined as "the unsolicited repetition of vocalizations made by another person." Also "it is estimated that up to 75% of persons on the autism spectrum have exhibited echolalia"

So I suppose I do it a bit, though it's not entirely involuntary and therefore I don't have it in the profound form, it seems. All that happens in my case is that if somebody asks me a question or makes a statement that's difficult for me to grasp (on account of its complexity or lack of clarity), I will repeat the question aloud, to help me focus on it better and fathom its meaning, or if the words don't seem to make sense, to lay them out in front of us so we can see what's going on and put it right. My ex would often say things to me that I couldn't fathom, and would also get annoyed when I repeated them back to her like that. She seemed to think it was a personal attack. But her grammar was often poor and I didn't know what else to do, apart from pretending to understand, which seems a pretty stupid thing to do. And for some reason people have very often reacted with impatience and annoyance when I've simply said "I don't understand," as if it's a huge effort for them to try again, so I was hoping that by repeating the dodgy syntax back to them, they'd at least see that maybe it was their fault.

If I find something hilarious, I do repeat it aloud (back to the person). Later, I might repeat exactly what I heard, to myself. Is this actually echolalia, even if I switch the pronouns on purpose when I repeat immediately?

This is tangentially related but I've been curious about this for a while: I often find myself vocally emulating nonvocal noises that catch my interest. More often than not, it's in the context of music but it certainly happens for incidental/environmental sounds as well (such as the sound of a metal object falling down a staircase or an alarm clock). Does that count as echolalia? And if not, is it still related in terms of function?