Definition of "echolalia" [echolalia]

• Psychiatry The immediate and involuntary repetition of words or phrases just spoken by others, often a symptom of autism or some types of schizophrenia. (noun)
• An infant's repetition of the sounds made by others, a normal occurrence in childhood development. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "They may echo the last few words of someone else's sentence, a condition known as echolalia, or they may not talk at all."
• "She has something called echolalia, and all the research I've done takes it back to autism, as in, if your child has this, they have autism."
• "And, you know, a lot of people have been concerned about video-based training for kids with autism because of the concern that they will fall into a pattern of -- it ` s called echolalia, and that is the repeating that you ` re talking about."