Effects of interlocutor directiveness and lexical familiarity on an autistic child's immediate echolalia

Abstract

This study of one echolalic boy with autism assessed the effects of interlocutor directiveness (high and low) and knowledge of the lexical items (known and unknown) on the frequency of occurrence of immediate verbal imitations (IVIs). The occurrence of IVIs produced in response to the condition in which unknown items were presented with a high directive style differed significantly (p < .05) from the occurrence of IVIs produced in response to the other conditions. This finding suggests that previous studies attributing increases in IVIs solely to either linguistic or social variables did not account for interaction effects. A visual display of the data indicated that the first presentation of a lexical item accounted for most of the increases in IVIs relative to subsequent presentations of the same item. This observation is in line with the interpretation of Leonard, Schwartz, Folger, Newhoff, & Wilcox, (1979), that normal children imitate the most "informative" items.