Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Echolalia or Vocal Imitations - the habit

As time passes, I can't help but notice that I have this habit of repeating each and every word I hear, especially in the car whilst listening to the deejay or radio commercials. It is not a major issue though.

I do found this habit quite annoying sometimes as it distracts my focus. In some cases, I would even repeat the same sentence for several times (in odd numbers). Funny? Maybe.  =P

However, looking at the positive side, this habit do comes in handy when taking notes during lectures or meeting sessions. I seldom miss out on important points because I keep repeating them in my head while writing it down.

Sitting in the division meeting this morning, I can't help to think about this matter and the urge to search for the term of this habit. So, this is what I found.

Echolalia - automatic repetition of vocalizations made by another person. It is closely related to echopraxia, the automatic repetition of movements made by another person. The word "echolalia" is derived from the Greek ἠχώ meaning "echo" or "to repeat", and λαλιά (laliá) meaning "babbling, meaningless talk" [of onomatopoeic origin from the verb λαλέω (laléo) meaning "I talk"].

Speech repetition is the saying by one individual of the spoken vocalizations made by another individual. This requires the ability in the person making the copy to map the sensory input they hear from the other person's vocal pronunciation into a similar motor output with their own vocal tract.

Such speech input output imitation often occurs independently of speech comprehension such as in speech shadowing when a person automatically says words heard in earphones, and the pathological condition of echolalia in which people reflexively repeat overheard words. This links to speech repetition of words being separate in the brain to speech perception. Speech repetition occurs in the dorsal speech processing stream while speech perception occurs in the ventral speech processing stream. Repetitions are often incorporated unawares by this route into spontaneous novel sentences immediately or after delay following storage in phonological memory.

In humans, the ability to map heard input vocalizations into motor output is highly developed due to this copying ability playing a critical role in a child's rapid expansion of their spoken vocabulary. In older children and adults it still remains important as it enables the continued learning of novel words and names and additional languages. Such repetition is also necessary for the propagation of language from generation to generation. It has also been suggested that the phonetic units out of which speech is made have been selected upon by the process of vocabulary expansion and vocabulary transmissions due to children preferentially copying words in terms of more easily imitated elementary units.

Conclusion: It is not a bad habit after all.... =P

4 comments:

  1. its really a good habit. keep it up!

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  2. Keep it up? kadang2 penat gak rasa otak nih...dok ulang ayat sama byk2 kali...=(

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  3. echolalia is only when you repeat it out loud..otherwise,it's known as *thought echo*~LOL!
    Echolalia is common among toddlers yg br belajar nk cakap or patient with mental illness or demented people or yup,random people! ^__^

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