Howlin P
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 1982 Jul;23(3):281-93. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.1982.tb00073.x.
The study investigated the syntactical level of spontaneous and echolalic utterances of 26 autistic children at different stages of phrase-speech development. In children using very brief utterances, echolalic phrases were significantly longer than their spontaneous speech. At higher levels of language development there were no significant differences between the lengths of echoed and spontaneous utterances. The frequency of echolalic phrases in children's speech was also found to be significantly less than the frequency of their spontaneous remarks, and the frequency of echolalic utterances declined as children advanced in linguistic competence.
该研究调查了26名处于短语言语发展不同阶段的自闭症儿童自发话语和模仿言语的句法水平。在使用非常简短话语的儿童中，模仿性短语明显长于他们的自发言语。在语言发展水平较高时，模仿话语和自发话语的长度没有显著差异。研究还发现，儿童言语中模仿性短语的出现频率明显低于自发话语的频率，并且随着儿童语言能力的提高，模仿话语的频率会下降。
