This paper is intended to show that various types of echolalia in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are developmentally significant and represent progress toward self-generated language. An audio-video recording of a 6-year, 7-month old boy with ASD interacting with his student clinician was collected and transcribed. The data were subjected to three analysis procedures: an adapted form of Conversation Analysis (CA), an adapted form of Speech Act Analysis (SAA), and the Natural Language Acquisition (NLA) Assessment. These analyses helped reveal various levels of echolalia and self-generated language in the boy's repertoire, along with communicative competencies such as awareness of conversational structure, ability to initiate/maintain interactions, presence of a range of speech acts, and ability to separate out smaller parts of echolalic gestalts and recombine them to form functional utterances. Additionally, an examination of the clinician's behaviors and verbalizations helped reveal some interesting effects of adult communicative style on echolalia and language development.
展开▼
