Is this attention deficit related? When someone says something funny I always repeat it and when I was younger when ever my mom said Hi Laura I responded by saying Hi Laura Hi Laura. I was wondering if it was ADD related or something else.

That sounds more related to autism than anything else. Possibly it could be your way of processing information.. repeating it to yourself to make sense of it?

I will re-say things using my own words some times to make sure I understand the other person , but repeating thier exact words isn't some thing I remember ever doing.

I never heard of echolalia in children with ADHD. I've only heard of it in children with Autism, as a way of communiction...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echolalia

Echolalia is the repetition or echoing of verbal utterances made by another person. A 1983 report indicated that up to 75% of verbal persons with autism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism) have some form of echolalia,[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echolalia#_note-0) but it may also be present in Tourette syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourette_syndrome), developmental disability (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_disability), schizophrenia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia) and, occasionally, other forms of psychopathology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathology). When done involuntarily, it is considered a tic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic).

The word "echolalia" is derived from the Greek "echo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo)", meaning "to repeat", and "lalia", meaning "a speaking," from lalein "to speak, prattle," of onomatopoeic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onomatopoeia) origin.

I kinda wonder about this myself - that I repeat myself for no reason, and sometimes others as well. (And I'm POSITIVE that I'm not an Aspie, or autistic, so that's no explanation.)

I talk out loud to myself to process things (and I'm aware it looks odd, so I try to do it only when I'm sure I'm 100% alone, or I say it so low under my breath that others can't hear me), but when I get stressed, I have a tendency to get "stuck" on certain phrases, and involuntarily repeat them over and over and over to myself. And sometimes it's not a meaningful word phrase, but nonsense babble I say.

I have no other tics that I know of, so that seems strange. It seems like a stress reliever, but that doesn't explain why I do that thing in particular. It might be sorta OCD-related, but I can stop it if I really want to. It's more like scratching an itch than a true compulsion.

I also occasionally repeat things that others say. It seems to be restricted entirely to "polite" social phrases - hello, goodbye, thank you, you're welcome, that sort of thing. I speculate that this is because social phrases of that sort aren't as "automated" for me as they should be - I didn't fully learn them at the right time, maybe, for them to be entrenched on a deeper level.

Social interaction, for me, is generally smooth if it has an inherent logic to it that I can see, and a context I understand how to navigate. That's MOST social interaction.

But phrases like thank you and goodbye are in some category all their own - overarching rule-dependent social interaction that is expected to be accomodated to the context. And I've always s*cked at knowing when to say them, and why, and to whom. If it's not LOGICAL to me, I'll screw up.

For example: I work at a Taco Time, and when customers come up and say, "Hi, how are you?" I often forget to reply and just wait for them to order. I don't reply because it doesn't make sense to - they don't know me, they don't really care how I'm doing, so why answer? Then sometimes customers stare at me in confusion because I haven't replied.

When I get flustered for some reason, THAT'S when I start repeating people. It's like I know I'm supposed to supply one of those phrases, but if I'm a bit confused, I rarely know automatically which one - so I just repeat what the other person said. The meaning behind that basically becoming a non-verbal sense of, "Uh, yeah...you too? [Polite thing.]"

That's not so bad in food service, because if someone says, "Thank you," I'm actually SUPPOSED to say, "Thank you," in return. (Although I rarely do, because when I'm not flustered, the interaction makes no LOGICAL sense to me - I got my customer what they wanted, and they aren't paying me directly, so why thank them?)

But sometimes, something weirder comes out. Like I once had a girl (one girl, alone) order food, and as she left, she said, "Thanks guys, see you."

And in response, I called, "Thanks guys, see you."

At least she laughed. :o



...Meds, at least, seem to help. If for no other reason than I don't get flustered or confused as easily.

Bean, talking to yourself and echolalia are very different things. I found a helpful chart here:
http://www.iidc.indiana.edu/IRCA/communication/echolaliImmed.html

Bean, talking to yourself and echolalia are very different things.
This is true, talking to yourself is relatively common.

But repeating your own words and repeating the words of others are both seen in autism, although both things likely serve different purposes for autistic people; echolalia is generally thought to have various communicative purposes (such as those outlined in your linked chart), but repeating your own words...I'm guessing that's a stim.

Since everyone is mentioning autism, I threw that in as well. I'd just find it curious if other people here do either, or both, but aren't actually spectrum. (i.e. What reason would WE do that, or something vaguely similar on the surface?) Repeating something funny is something I think a lot of NT people do, but repeating Hi Laura, Hi Laura might not be - it's sort of hard to tell from Bandie's post what her subjective experience of that was...why she thinks she did it.

Could she not think of what a more appropriate response was? Was she just in that common childhood phase of repeating others to get a rise out of them? And so on.

Wait, HERE it is! In a stub linked off of the Tourette syndrome Wikipedia article:

Palilalia is the repetition or echoing of one's own spoken words, and may sound like stuttering. It is a complex tic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic), like echolalia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echolalia), klazomania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klazomania), and coprolalia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprolalia). All can be symptoms of Tourette syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourette_syndrome), Asperger syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome), or autism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism).
THAT'S what I'm talking about!

The one thing that is missing in this thread is the fact that echolallia and pallalia can also be an OCD thing...

Me :D

I do this as a tic. 3 is the magic # most of the time, or until it feels right. I'm also a OCDer...told a touretter, told that it wasn't uncommon to find them as going hand in hand with each other

~Ali

The one thing that is missing in this thread is the fact that echolallia and pallalia can also be an OCD thing...

Me :DI forgot all about that speedo...