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Results for “ECHOLALIA”

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[A psycholinguistic study in a patient with echolalia].

Language is often impaired in patients with a primary degenerative dementia syndrome. Severe dementia may even lead to mutism, a condition in which the person does not produce any spontaneous speech, despite preservation of consciousness. The question is if there are any language abilities left in patients who do not speak. In this single case-study the echolalic behaviour of a patient with severe dementia and mixed transcortical aphasia (or isolation of the speech area) was analysed by means of special linguistic tasks. In repeating sentences violating number agreement, the patient spontaneously corrected the pronoun, the noun or the verb. Furthermore, her verbal output during repetition tasks was highly constrained to lexically acceptable Dutch nouns. Despite extremely poor comprehension, this patient did not repeat verbal utterances in a parrot-like fashion. There are not many reports in the literature of patients who develop a mixed transcortical aphasia as a consequence of primary degenerative dementia. A comparable case was described by H. Whitaker. Single case-studies, such as these, are essential to our insight into the course of language breakdown in senile dementia. The preserved repetition ability of this patient demonstrates the robustness of the articulatory loop system, even if there is a severe comprehension deficit.

Aged↗

Regressive language in severe head injury.

In a follow-up study of 50 patients with severe head injuries three patients had echolalia. One patient with initially global aphasia had echolalia for some weeks when he started talking. Another patient with severe diffuse brain damage, dementia, and emotional regression had echolalia. The dysfunction was considered a detour performance. In the third patient echolalia and palilalia were details in a total pattern of regression lasting for months. The patient, who had extensive frontal atrophy secondary to a very severe head trauma, presented an extreme state of regression returning to a foetal-body pattern and behaving like a baby.

Adolescent↗

Effects of a computer-based intervention program on the communicative functions of children with autism.

This study investigated the use of computer-based intervention for enhancing communication functions of children with autism. The software program was developed based on daily life activities in the areas of play, food, and hygiene. The following variables were investigated: delayed echolalia, immediate echolalia, irrelevant speech, relevant speech, and communicative initiations. Multiple-baseline design across settings was used to examine the effects of the exposure of five children with autism to activities in a structured and controlled simulated environment on the communication manifested in their natural environment. Results indicated that after exposure to the simulations, all children produced fewer sentences with delayed and irrelevant speech. Most of the children engaged in fewer sentences involving immediate echolalia and increased the number of communication intentions and the amount of relevant speech they produced. Results indicated that after practicing in a controlled and structured setting that provided the children with opportunities to interact in play, food, and hygiene activities, the children were able to transfer their knowledge to the natural classroom environment. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

Activities of Daily Living↗

Bedtime soliloquies and linguistic competence in autism.

This study investigates the linguistic competence of an autistic child by means of her bedtime soliloquies. It suggests the usefulness of such monologues as a diagnostic tool and addresses the question of the interrelationship between echolalia and language development. Three bedtime soliloquies of an eight-year-old echolalic autistic child are analyzed along the dimensions of echolalia versus propositional speech, types of ungrammaticality produced, and analysis of connected discourse. The results are compared with those of a normal child reported earlier in the literature. The present analysis demonstrates the difficulties in the judgement of propositional versus echolalic speech. The types of ungrammaticality were found to be useful indicators of apparent differences between the acquisition process in the normal and the autistic child. They revealed that the autistic child may use specific linguistic strategies only minimally utilized by the normal child. The discourse analysis points up additional differences as well as similarities in the way the autistic subject organizes her utterances in connected discourse. It also shows that the autistic child has specific but limited linguistic competence. It is hypothesized that the autistic subject acquires more functional, useful language by a process of gradually breaking down echolalic patterns. In terms of therapy, these findings would support the use of echolalia as a basis for language training.

Autistic Disorder↗

The interactional significance of formulas in autistic language.

The phenomenon of echolalia in autistic language is well documented. Whilst much early research dismissed echolalia as merely an indicator of cognitive limitation, later work identified particular discourse functions of echolalic utterances. The work reported here extends the study of the interactional significance of echolalia to formulaic utterances. Audio and video recordings of conversations between the first author and two research participants were transcribed and analysed according to a Conversation Analysis framework and a multi-layered linguistic framework. Formulaic language was found to have predictable interactional significance within the language of an individual with autism, and the generic phenomenon of formulaicity in company with predictable discourse function was seen to hold across the research participants, regardless of cognitive ability. The implications of formulaicity in autistic language for acquisition and processing mechanisms are discussed.

Adult↗