echolalia

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I mentioned to someone (family member-medical professional) that whenever I tried one of those tests where someone says a word and you're supposed to say the first word that comes into your mind, I always immediately think the initial word. Then I get a picture. Anything I think after that is not automatic. Example dog-dog (mental image of dog). She said this was a form of echolalia. It doesn't feel like a compulsion. It's just what happens. Curiously, if someone says a word that has an obvious opposite I will think the opposite rather than the initial word.Example cold-hot. Does anyone else experience this?

That's very interesting. I would think that NT's would need to contemplate the first word before associating to it, but I suppose it would be automatic for them?

I also am quick with opposites. When thinking of words related to other words, I often think of random things, unrelated to the word said. I don't know why. It's all very interesting though.

It's supposed to be the very very first thing that comes into your mind without contemplation. I don't even know the validity of the test- I think it's an old Freudean thing. It's hard to figure whether repeating the word in your mind is just rehearing it or not but apparently not everyone does that. When I hear cold I don't think (cold-hot) I think hot- anything else is word- word- picture. Off topic whitetiger (hope it's ok) but your avatar is very similar to a dream I once had. I was standing in a darkened room looking out the window onto an empty street lined with trees in a snow storm and a large snow leopard comes walking down the street. It was a very compelling image emotionally.

My teenage aspie son has always done that. He also, when he was younger, did the traditional echolalia where he always kept repeating back whatever was said to him. I did that to a lesser extent when I was younger (and drove everyone nuts doing it, lol; it was long before I was diagnosed with NVLD with overlapping A tendencies). I still find myself repeating words inwardly a lot of the time, and my son tells me that he does that as well; sometimes he does it verbally but mostly by now is able to keep it quiet.

But I don't think what you're describing is all that unusual with aspies, my son is like that and other aspies I've known are, too.

My son is a diagnosed Aspie who used to repeat the last part of his sentences under his breath. I suspect I am an Aspie as well, which helps me to help my son cope. If only he'd listen .lol.

I had that and I tried explaining to this girl and she told me ALL children have it.

If someone asks me a question, I tend to repeat the question before answering. Is that a form of echolalia?

I don´t think I do any echolalia with word association tests, though.

Sounds more like a coping technique to buy you time to process the question and a reply. That doesn't exclude it being echolalia, I just think it's probably a coping technique.

Yes.

Not necessarily "Autistic echolalia" (not sure how common it is outside the Autistic population so I have no idea if it is diagnostic), but most certainly echolalia.

Not exactly sure why I do it, I can´t really say. I think it may be partly to process the question though, because I notice if I occasionally DON`T do that, I will re-ask the question again halfway into my answering it...(sometimes I even interrupt myself in the middle of a sentence)- for instance "you did ask me such-and-such, right?" Which is even weirder, I guess!

I have mild echolalia sometimes....It gets to be more pronounced when I am drunk..or excited.

my brain is so lost in his own labirinth that anything can come out of my mouth any moment as an answer.

I often say "beep beep" after the phone beeps and things like that, nonverbal stuff like when my baby squeeks or squeals I do it back to him without thinking.

I have had this test aswell, but not knowing what it was for. I assumed that I was supposed to come up with a word that was different than what they said. And with that in mind, it would take me a few seconds to come up with something because all I could think of whas words that related to the word they said. Like I hear the word the person says, and when I am told to say a word, I see their word, and a whole bunch of things that branch off of it, and it was really hard to get away from that whole "tree" all together so I would purposely come up with a random word. Also when they said to say the first word that comes to mind, it was almost like I thought of more than one word at once, all at the same time, and couldn't pick one, so I had to think to come up with something different from all those. So actually I was not saying the first word that came to mind. Which messes with the results. Ooops. Well now I know.