The learner repeats your question instead of answering it

The situation

You ask "What do you want?" and the learner says "What do you want?" You offer a choice — "cracker or apple?" — and the learner says "cracker or apple." The learner has echoic skills and is being taught to answer questions and to request.

What the plan usually asks for

1. Treat the repetition as information about the prompt, not as a wrong answer to be corrected. A learner who echoes is responding to the last thing they heard. The teaching problem is transferring control from your words to the question or the item.
2. Use the prompting and transfer procedure the program specifies — often a shorter prompt, a pause, or presenting the item before the words. Programs for this exact situation usually fade the verbal model so the question or the item comes to control the answer.
3. Reinforce the response the program targets, and record whether it was echoed, prompted or independent. The prompt-level data show whether transfer is happening.
4. Avoid offering choices as a question when the program says to present items instead. A spoken list of options is itself a model to echo.

What not to do

• Do not say "no" or repeat the question louder; both add more words to echo.
• Do not stop asking questions altogether.
• Do not decide the learner is being difficult; echoing is a skill, and this is the stage where it is being built on.

When to tell your supervisor

• Tell your supervisor if echoing is blocking progress across programs or if the program has no transfer procedure written for it.

Terms used here

• Echoic
• Intraverbal
• Mand
• Transfer of Stimulus Control
• Prompt Fading