The Lingo Lab research team at Michigan State University, along with former postdoctoral fellow Janine Mathée-Scott, has published a new article in Frontiers in Psychology that introduces a creative method for studying how autistic children understand language within their own speech.
The article, titled “A novel method for examining autistic children’s comprehension of individual words produced within delayed echolalia: A proof-of-concept pilot study,” explores whether autistic children comprehend the individual words they use in what’s known as delayed echolalia—when someone repeats or “scripts” phrases they’ve heard before, sometimes from favorite shows, conversations, or daily routines. The researchers used a screen-based eyegaze task to see whether two autistic children recognized individual words embedded within their own delayed echoes. Importantly, both children demonstrated comprehension of those words.
The study was led by Mathée-Scott along with MSU researchers Grace Corrigan, Emily Lorang, Zachary Hesse, Jennifer Johnson, and Lingo Lab Director Courtney E. Venker.
“This paper is exciting because it represents an innovative approach to understanding delayed echolalia, an understudied aspect of autistic communication,” said Mathée-Scott. “By using established eyegaze methods, we were able to empirically test whether autistic children process the words they use in their delayed echoes. Preliminary findings indicate that the two autistic children we tested did demonstrate processing (i.e., comprehension) of individual words within their delayed echoes.”
While the eyegaze method itself has been used for decades in developmental psychology, the novelty of this study lies in its design. The team combined language sampling (recordings and analyses of children’s natural speech) with parent reports to identify each child’s delayed echoes. They then created individualized eyegaze tasks for each participant, testing comprehension of words that occurred in their own delayed echoes.
“This approach lays the foundation for future work to examine autistic children’s understanding of the language they produce in delayed echolalia,” said Mathée-Scott. “We hope this will allow for future work to support a more thorough understanding of how echolalia fits within the larger picture of autistic children’s language.”
The Lingo Lab is a research lab in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders at Michigan State University. The team hopes this proof-of-concept study will inspire further research into how echolalia fits within the broader picture of autistic communication—and ultimately, how it might inform more supportive and accurate understandings of autistic language.