Speech-Language Therapy teaches children and adolescents how to communicate effectively, solve problems and make decisions independently.  It provides the necessary tools for bright and motivated individuals to engage in meaningful social relationships and complete a fulfilling educational and life experience.

Speech-language therapists are medical professionals who are trained to identify and treat issues with feeding and swallowing which often go undetected and can be a serious threat to an individual’s health. These issues can include a dislike of foods or food textures or inability to properly swallow food and drinks. Difficulties in one or more of these areas include risk of pneumonia, malnutrition and dehydration. Swallowing issues can also affect babies. Infants who have difficulty latching, breast feeding, drinking from a bottle, weak lip muscles, difficulty transitioning from a bottle to soft foods, difficulty chewing, and choking/coughing due to eating can also benefit from therapy.

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 when the context doesn't match.

Perseveration and echolalia are common among children and adults with autism; however, many children and adults have these characteristics and are not autistic.

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

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