Echolalia as communicative strategy

Abstract

We explore how fictive interaction (Pascual 2002, 2014), manifested as echolalia (i.e. verbatim or pseudo-verbatim reported speech), is successfully used by autistic children as compensatory strategy in conversation. We video-recorded four Brazilian autistic children between the ages of 4 and 12 in interactions with adults in weekly therapy sessions. We found that these autistic children do not use direct quotation to represent prior speech only, as in ordinary reported speech. Instead, they use direct speech to make mental contact with past (types of) communicative situations. Direct quotation is used fictively as a means of expressing needs, describing situations, and referring to people, animals, and events. These fictive quotations may reflect socio-communicative or socio-cultural knowledge, or experiences with prior specific interactions.