From Echolalia and Scripting to Original Speech: Top Strategies for Gestalt Language Processors

“My child isn’t talking yet but he can sing songs or repeat lines/scripts from movies.”

Or…

“My child simply repeats what everyone else says.”

These are the kinds of things I hear from parents of children who are learning language….

….differently.

See, it turns out there are two main ways that children learn language.

Some children learn language one word at a time.

Other children, learn language in chunks by repeating whole sentences or scripts that they hear elsewhere.

These children are called Gestalt Language Processors.

I’m speech-language pathologist Carrie Clark and on today’s episode of The Speech and Language Kids Podcast, I’m going to share my top 6 steps for helping those gestalt language processors find their voice.

Listen to the Podcast Here

You can listen to the full podcast episode below:

Children who learn language in chunks or scripts known as “gestalts”.

They may repeat entire phrases, sentences, or scripts that they have heard from other places.

These still have meaning to them but it may not be the same meaning as the specific words would lead you to believe.

Here’s where it gets tricky: if a child isn’t speaking much (or at all), it can be hard to tell which way they are learning language.

Here are some signs you may be working with a GLP (and therefore want to model more language chunks instead of single words):

• Melodic way of speaking with a lot of variation in intonation (even if you can’t understand the words)
• Tend to say things the same way every time
• Like to sing songs
• Love categories of language, like farm animals, shapes, letters, numbers, etc.
• Like to play the same way every time or re-enact scenes

Often the gestalts that children are saying are trying to convey something other than what the words literally mean.

For example, a child who says “do you wanna build a snowman” may not be trying to tell us about snowmen at all.

Maybe they are remembering how they saw that movie with their grandma and they want to talk about her instead.

Pay attention to the things the child is saying and try to guess what the actual meaning may be.

Even if you’re not sure, respond anyway!

These scripts are communication and we need to respond to the child to let them know we understand that they are trying to connect with us.

Therapy for this group is not drill and practice.

It’s about letting the child lead the play or interaction and being there to model language along the way.

Imitate what the child does and says.

Respond to their communications even if you don’t understand.

GLPs grab chunks of language by listening for pauses on either end.

Model simple sentences with silence on either end, such as…

silence ~ It’s snack time. ~ silence

Have you ever noticed that gestalt language processors (GLPs) tend to pick up more phrases and scripts that are full of excitement or emotion?

This is because they are tuned in to the intonation or the pitch of what is said.

Gestalts that vary from high pitch to low pitch are more fun to say and will stick with our GLPs better than a more monotone one.

Once the child has a large enough repertoire of gestalts, he will start breaking those down into their individual parts or words.

We can help facilitate this by modeling gestalts that are easy to break down into smaller part, and easy to use in a variety of situations.

Try modeling sentences that start like these:

• I’m thinking about…
• I’m ready to…
• Let’s…
• We’re going to….
• It’s time to…
• Where’s…
• Look at the….
• How about we…

Remember how I said we’d be breaking down those gestalts later?

As the child gets better at using gestalts to communicate, model mixing and matching parts of the gestalts like this:

Shorten Long Gestalts:

• Original Gestalt: “Up above the world so high”
• You model: “So high”

Recombine Smaller Chunks to Create New Utterances:

• Original Gestalts: “Let’s get out of here” and “Want some more?”
• You model: “Let’s get + some more?”

Are you looking to learn more about supporting gestalt language processors?

We have a ton of great resources inside The Hub, including…

…courses

…therapy materials

…handouts

…and more!

Join us inside The Hub to get the best resources on helping the GLP in your life:

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