BASIS OF AUTISTIC ECHOLALIA

Three children who were selected to represent varieties of developmental, belated and autistic echolalia were followed at bimonthly intervals for repeated assessments of echoic output and verbal comprehension. In addition to comparing their performances as reflected by these measures, qualitative differences of the echolalia, per se, were examined. Characteristics, linguistic and paralinguistic, which differentiated the autistic echolalia from that spoken by the other two children were discussed in terms of both traditional affect-related explanations and a contrary language-related rationale emanating from the study and from the literature. © 1969.