Pragmatic language; also known as social skills, is the ability to understand and adequately maneuver daily interactions with other people.  This includes what we say (and don’t say), how we say it, and body language that accompanies our words.

Here are some examples of pragmatic language skills:

• Social greetings
• Understanding and respecting personal space
• Story telling
• Eye contact
• Understanding body language and gestures
• Having conversations (without the adult having to maintain the conversation)
• Joint attention (when two people use gestures and gaze to share attention with an object/action/person)
• Playing reciprocally (turn taking)
• Understanding emotions of self and others
• Knowing how to act in different social situations
• Knowing what a “friend” is and how to make/keep friends
• Understanding metaphors/sarcasm/jokes/idioms
• Asking for or offering help verbally
• Asking for clarification

Sometimes people with pragmatic language impairments gravitate towards very young children or only adults.  Autistic children typically have difficulty with pragmatic language skills; however, it is important to remember a person may have pragmatic language difficulties and not be on the Autism Spectrum. 

If you want to learn more about pragmatic language skills or suspect your child has difficulty with pragmatic language talk to your pediatrician or contact us to see if we can help!

Echolalia (pronounced: ech•o•lay•li•a) is the automatic repetition of vocalizations made by another person (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition).  There are two categories of echolalia: immediate and delayed.

Immediate echolalia is just that, immediate. For example, if I say “do you want to play with cars?” An immediate echolalic response would be, “do you want to play with cars?” Rather than answering the question, the child simply “echos” the question.  Is is possible this response is due to lack of understanding, delayed processing, and/or an inability to formulate an appropriate response.
Delayed echolalia… yep you guessed it… is delayed repetition of a word or phrase.  Many times this is evident in the repetition of television commercials, movie lines, and/or  parental reprimands.  A couple of common examples are reciting entire scenes from Cars (the movie) or blurting out “you better not” randomly and/or inappropriately.

Perseveration and echolalia are common among children and adults with an Autism Spectrum Diagnosis; however, many children and adults have these symptoms and are not on the spectrum.

If you have concerns about perseveratory behaviors or echolalic speech, talk to your speech-language pathologist and/or occupational therapist today.

- Amy Grant, M.S., CCC-SLP