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ECHOLALIA
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Dictionary entry overview: What does echolalia mean?
• ECHOLALIA (noun)
The noun ECHOLALIA has 2 senses:
1. an infant's repetition of sounds uttered by others
2. (psychiatry) mechanical and meaningless repetition of the words of another person (as in schizophrenia)
Familiarity information: ECHOLALIA used as a noun is rare.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
An infant's repetition of sounds uttered by others
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("echolalia" is a kind of...):
echo (a reply that repeats what has just been said)
Sense 2
Meaning:
(psychiatry) mechanical and meaningless repetition of the words of another person (as in schizophrenia)
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("echolalia" is a kind of...):
repeating; repetition (the act of doing or performing again)
Domain category:
psychiatry; psychological medicine; psychopathology (the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders)
Context examples
A subtype of schizophrenia characterized by a psychomotor disturbance that may involve motoric immobility, excessive motor activity, extreme negativism or mutism, peculiarities of voluntary movement, echolalia, and/or echopraxia.
(Catatonic Type Schizophrenia, NCI Thesaurus)
Contagious yawning is triggered involuntarily when we observe another person yawn -it is a common form of echophenomena- the automatic imitation of another's words (echolalia) or actions (echopraxia).
(Why Is Yawning so Contagious?, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
There was the boom of a bass drum, and the voice of the orchestra leader rang out suddenly above the echolalia of the garden.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
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