b during some of her stay in the hospital so that she would be considered retarded and the staff would not seek contact with her. On the other hand, there are other mute children with autism who also have developmental delays that interfere with their comprehension of speech.
Children with autism are also often perceived as deaf, if they do not respond to spoken language. Often they are given hearing tests, because they are able to ignore much of other's communication. They may stare straight ahead, even when someone speaks directly to them or shouts near them. Sound does not automatically startle and attract them, as it does children without autism. As Annabel Stehli (1991) noted about Georgie, her own child, that she seemed capable of being endlessly interested in objects, but almost completely oblivious to people's attempts to attract her attention and communicate with her.
One of the most common problems is echolalia. Echolalia is the behavior in which individuals with autism echo back the communications of others. They repeat the same words and phrasing. While Tinbergen (1983) asserted that echolalia was probably a phase of normal speech development, later theorists contend that echolalia within the population of children with autism is an entirely different matter. In children without autism, echolalia is transitory and appears to be associated with learning speech and learning how to communicate. In children with autism, echolalia seems to represent more of a failure to understand the purpose of language and how to use it to communicate with another person (Baron-Cotten & Bolton, 1995). Certainly Donna Williams (1992) indicated that that was the case in her situation. She early recognized that others had some expectations of her when they gabbled at her, but she did not understand what was expected of her, or how to accomplish it.
She also indicated, however, that she had no real desire to communicate, whic...