"Keyboard tic"

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Hello everyone,
"Keyboard tic" is how my niece describes her thinking process: before saying anything, or while talking, she types words on a keyboard in her mind. She is very tired of this: she has to type every single word. My question is: is it one of the traits of autism, or something else?
My niece is 15, her holistic doctor suspects she has autism, because of poor eye contact and poor memory. She can't recall what she read, say, a week ago. She hates school, doesn't talk to kids and doesn't know how. Very intelligent though.
She was bullied by her own sister all her life, even left home for a month (went to stay with her dad) because of her.
Is it possible to get rid of this horrible "tic"? And why is it happenning?
Thank you.
English is not my first language, so my apologies.

I've never heard of that specific thing before, but it does have similarities with the ways that some autistic people handle language in their minds.

For example, some autistic people can only experience their inner thoughts as pictures, translating words to and from images as necessary, and might have difficulty remembering things to do with words that don't easily conjure up an image. It's also not unusual for autistic people to need to work out a script for what they're about to say before they start speaking, as searching for words when they're already speaking can be difficult, or they might need to practice a sentence a few times in their head to be sure that it's going to come out right (I often do this). What you've said does sound related to these kinds of language traits, and the trouble with her memory for words seems to point in that direction; but take that with a very large pinch of salt as I'm not a language therapist! It may depend on whether she absolutely has to do it this way because she has no other way to fit complex sentences together, or has a compulsion to do it in an attempt to avoid some kind of real or imagined anxiety (similar to OCD, for example.)

I had this as a kid. I don't recall doing it with words I spoke aloud, but when I was thinking I often felt the need to spell words out on a mental keyboard. Looking back, I think it was either OCD or the obsessive behaviors overlap you often see with autism. The fact that she describes it as a "tic" sounds like it's a compulsive behavior, as mine was back then. I grew out of it, and sometimes these things are as simple as that, even when they're severe. If she hasn't experienced obsessions or compulsions before, they might have developed in response to recent stress. If that's the case, she should be alright once her anxiety levels go back down. If she has other "rituals," though (compulsions can feel like an "itch" on the brain that won't go away until a specific action is performed), you might want to talk to a doctor about the possibility of obsessive compulsive disorder. In my case, doctors have told me that my compulsions are just autism.

AceofPens, Trogluddite, thank you both.