Copying accents--related to echolalia?

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AspieOtaku
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20 Jan 2013, 5:51 am

I think so I sometimes have the habit of copying accents and with great accuracy as well.


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Lockheart
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20 Jan 2013, 6:52 am

Verdandi wrote:
I've found that reading rather idiosyncratic writing means I will probably imitate that writing style for a time afterward, too. This has worked for good as well as bad. The way I write after reading Hunter S. Thompson can be pretty entertaining, but it can get me into trouble too. I remember reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman before writing some fairy tale-type stuff, and it came out very Gaimanesque even though I was not consciously emulating him.


Absolutely this. When I'm about to write my own fiction, I don't read other fiction directly beforehand.



kirostun
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20 Jan 2013, 1:10 pm

Quote:
Right now, for example, I'm copying a British accent because I've been listening to a youtube video from someone in England. As I'm typing this, I'm thinking the words out loud to myself, and the pronunciations are the same as what I heard in the video.

Same thing happens to me. Now i am copying Spanish accent because i watch funny videos from the spanish speakers. Although it depends on the region of Spain. I copy the Iberian spanish.



Misslizard
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20 Jan 2013, 1:12 pm

I'm good at them also,I like accents.I've never had problems understanding people with them either.


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GhostsInTheWallpaper
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20 Jan 2013, 2:33 pm

Re: NTs/non-autistics and accents...

Most non-autistic children pick up the accents of their school peers or other prominent figures in their lives during childhood. I remember hearing the story of my sister picking up a strong, out-of-town accent from a favorite TV show and having been sent to speech therapy to correct it. (I personally remember very little from that epoch of my life.) When non-autistics get older, however, I think we tend to lose some of the acuity in our sensory memory and even our ability to perceive unfamiliar sounds properly. Our brains go through this extensive "weeding" process in adolescence that gets rid of most of the unused connections, so if we want to learn something new, we need to learn it kind of "from scratch" and at a slower rate than we would when we were children. That may be why we tend not to copy accents beyond childhood. I heard that autistic people may not go through the same neurodevelopmental processes as non-autistics and thus may retain some of those extra connections, which might make it easier for autistic people to write new accents and mannerisms into their sensory memories.

I'm personally not very good at imitating accents, and have retained the same way of speaking throughout a wide variety of environment and situational changes. However, when I was a kid/teenager and was in an informal acting situation, I would try to imitate the manner of speaking of someone playing a similar role in a familiar movie. For example, when I was playing Alice from "Alice in Wonderland" I spoke with a British accent, because Alice was British in the live-action movie version I'd last seen, and when I was playing a witch I tried to modulate my voice like the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz". People seemed to find it unusual, but I just kind of thought it was part of the role. That may be where my own social pragmatic deficits were starting to kick in, not realizing that in informal school acting contexts I wasn't expected to go *that* far (or at least, not expected to change my voice or accent) to portray a character. The fact that nobody else did apparently wasn't enough of a clue for me that I wasn't supposed to.


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20 Jan 2013, 2:46 pm

I'm good at copying accents.



nonames
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20 Jan 2013, 3:20 pm

I do this too, and as far as I know most people can't. I mean just look at bad actors trying to imitate accents or your highschool acting class. I've only met one 2 other people who can do it. I believe they were NT though. And being able to do it means: copying an accent in under two hours.

I also find it hard to switch back and forth. If I'm talking with one accent, I can't do the other one, and vice versa. Does this happen to anyone? I have to let it wear off and listen to an american accent again.

It's kind of strange that we can pick up these differences and yet sometimes we don't understand the emotion behind a tone of voice. But I've noticed the same thing with facial features. I see stuff moving, I could even draw a particular face someone made but I often don't know what it means.



ChosenOfChaos
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21 Jan 2013, 12:05 am

I most definitely do this too. So useful on 'Talk Like a Pirate' Day!



BornThisWay
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23 Jan 2013, 12:49 pm

The point I was making was that I mirror the accent automatically - I have to consciously remember to use what I know is a neutral accent. It is as though I have no attachment to my own voice. I think I have a baseline accent that emerges when no one is around and I have not heard anyone for a while - but I lose it when talking to others.

One of the reasons that autism is usually unnoticed until the toddler stage is that people on the spectrum don't close off neuronal pathways like NTs. Everyone is born with a fantastic number of neuronal connections and it is partly through a pruning process or the shutting down of pathways that a neurotypical brain develops. Autistics don't do this in the same way - hence the peculiar hypersensitivity etc. Also, we apparently dont develop language in the same way either - the 'loss of language development' is one of the hallmarks of autism, although some Aspies actually become hyperlinguistic.

Perhaps this accent thing is just one of the sub-types of the social communication conditions/disorders. I think the idea that the auditory mirror neurons babies use to acquire language and accents are still active in me is correct. NTs mostly lose these connections and have a fixed voice that is reflective of their early conditioning.

Anyway, it's nice to know that others have this 'issue-problem-talent-ability-curse'...