Beyond the clinical dichotomy: a phenomenological examination of echolalia from the parent perspective to inform educational and clinical policy and practice

Historically, echolalia has been defined as the repetition of words, phrases, sounds and noises. In practice, echolalia has predominantly been siloed within the fields of speech pathology and behavioural psychology. This form of speech has been frequently reported in Autistic school-aged children (and is observed in other conditions such as Downs Syndrome, certain speech aphasias, dementia, and Giles De La Tourettes, amongst others) but has also been observed to occur in adulthood. Within the literature are two paradigms that have sought to examine echolalia. One paradigm, termed “developmentalism”, understands echolalia to hold important communicative and non-communicative functions. This perspective seeks to develop communicative echolalia towards more self-generated speech while maintaining that non-communicative echolalia holds important emotional-regulatory purposes. The alternative paradigm, termed “behaviourism”, perceives echolalia to be non-communicative and seeks to supress or abate echolalia. Behaviourism also seeks to modify instances of echolalia for emotional-regulatory purposes because of the perceived negative social factors. These paradigms, which are clinically orientated and academically constructed, have created a dichotomous literature. That is to say, the literature has given little consideration to any alternative perspectives that may exist. So, too, is the literature relatively silent on those who experience echolalia across a variety of different environments and contexts, such as parents, teachers, and other caregivers. Practice wise, clinicians, largely guided by literature, come to approach echolalia through either one of the two paradigms. Ironically, parents, who arguably have the greatest exposure to the echolalia of their children and who are intimately involved in intervention programs, have rarely been asked their perspectives in a research context to contribute to inform policy and practice. This research sought to step outside of