Mouthing Other People’s Words When They’re Talking

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, this is Stephanie. I’m from Tallahassee, Florida.

Hi Stephanie, welcome. What’s up?

I’m a social worker, and so as you can imagine I talk to people a lot. I’ve been doing this for 20-plus years. I’ve had several professional and personal experiences over the years where when I am talking, the person I’m talking to will start mouthing my words. Silently. And it’s sometimes distracting, but it’s also kind of intriguing. I’m wondering if you’re familiar with this, is there a word for it? Anything you can tell me about it?

And so, are they listening with a particular intensity? Do they have a hearing problem?

Yes. They’re very focused. I’ve wondered if maybe this helps them learn and help them digest what I’m saying. I work with folks with mental health backgrounds. Maybe it has something to do with that. My father’s a therapist. I’ve asked him, he told me about something called “echolalia,” which is a repetition of another person’s words. I said, “Well, they’re not vocalizing anything. They’re just looking at me very intensely, and they will be moving their mouth.” And it looks like they’re mouthing what I’m saying.

These are colleagues or clients?

Clients.

You don’t sound like a slow speaker to me that you’re speaking to slowly for them?

I don’t get that sense. I am a context person, so sometimes I can be a bit verbose.

Okay, good.

So I wonder sometimes, are they just not following me? Am I being too, you know, complex? Or, you know, maybe it’s me? But it’s happened in enough different settings that I started to believe, okay, there’s got to be something in this. You know, I’ve met enough people that do this, but this has got to be something. Whether it’s psychiatric disorder or a way for people to process information, I have no clue, and I couldn’t find anything when I started looking into it.

I would say ding ding on both of those. Ring the yes bell.

Okay. Ding ding.

Echolalia is a pretty good guess. I’m not an expert in this, but as I understand that the clinical diagnosis doesn’t require that they vocalize the words, and it can also be used to describe when they’re anticipating your words or trying to say them at the same time, or even when they repeat them just a fraction of a second after you say them.

So, but there’s another word which is related, which is “palilalia.”

P-A-L-I-L-A-L-I-A.

And this is when someone just repeats the last one or two words of what you’re saying. And again, they can just mouth them to themselves. They don’t have to use their vocal cords for it to be palilalia.

So you had one of those words and there’s a second word, but in general, there’s another theory here that I’ve read a little bit on. Again, I’m not an expert in clinical diagnoses for these kinds of speech behaviors, but it’s called mirroring.

And the idea is that when you mirror someone else’s actions, including their speech and the shape and form of their words in their mouth, you better understand what they’re saying because like you can mirror somebody say “tennis serve,” you can move your arm in that same way and that can help you understand how they successfully hit a ball in a difficult situation and get you to being a little more expert yourself. And it’s the same supposedly with the words that people are saying. So in a situation where someone has a hearing impairment or where they’re really just not getting the words, repeating the words can help you have that second chance to rehear them but kind of in your own head.

Yeah.

You know we were talking about diagnosis and I think the last thing you said, Grant, makes a lot of sense to me that there’s not necessarily a pathology involved. I mean one of the best listeners I know on the planet does this and I think it’s just her intensity of listening to another person. She’s very very present and she will do that.

Stephanie, when they do this are they anticipating your words? They’re trying to predict what you’re about to say?

It feels like it’s happening simultaneously.

And how accurate do you think they are? Do they get the words or just kind of the lips kind of formlessly moving along to what you’re saying?

You know, honestly, I’m trying to be present with them. It’s like, try not to pay too much attention to it. I’m not sure I can answer that. Because if I let it distract me, then I’m not able to help them in the best way possible.

I know what you’re talking about. I had a co-worker and they do this, and I’m trying to avoid pronouns, and they would do full sentences of pretty much everyone they spoke to, and their lips didn’t match the words at all, and it was like little worms wriggling on their face because it didn’t match. And they were very intelligent and very competent at their work, and perfectly, you know, regular human being as far as I ever knew, and it was just, I guess, their way of understanding better.

I’m sure there’s a little bit of an undertone when I was younger, one of my older brothers used to do this to annoy me as I was talking he would try to repeat out loud every single word I said.

So I’m sure there’s a little bit of that for my child, just annoyed by it.

There’s one more theory that’s worth considering and you might google it to see what you find, or even look in your professional texts on this. It invokes this idea that humans are constantly calculating the odds. We are constantly in small ways and large ways trying to predict the future.

And there’s one theory that says mouthing the words that someone else is speaking is your way of trying to predict what they’re going to say next as you prepare yourself to respond. So it’s a form of turn-taking.

And I’ve certainly, I’ve read about people who have different kinds of learning abilities, including autistic people.

And it’s one of the things that they may do because they have difficulty, some of them with interactions.

So one of the things that they may do in order to have that turn and know when their turn is and be ready for the turn and have something more like a regular conversation with the people around them, a regular dialogue.

That resonates with me. If I were to listen to my intuition, that’s what it feels like to me most often, that people are trying to predict what I’m saying.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Yeah.

I should say, as Martha said, I want to underscore this.

Lots of people do this. It doesn’t mean there’s a pathology there. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with them. As far as can be told by the experts, it’s pretty ordinary, except if it occurs with a whole other host of pathological behaviors, which may not be present in most people.

Right.

That’s just fascinating to me.

Thank you.

Well, thank you so much, Stephanie, for calling.

Absolutely. Thank you all. I enjoy your show often.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, we know there’s something that you do that you’ve been wondering about, and I think this is the place where you can get a nice conversation going on, whatever it is, and we won’t think you’re weird.

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