The Problem of Gestalt Language Processing Stages
Ming from Agents of Speech argues that Gestalt Language Processing isn't binary and prevalence claims lack evidence. Many children mix gestalt and analytic learning, and rigid stage models can mislead. He recommends teaching high-frequency single words alongside functional phrases, tailored to each child rather than following dogmatic stages.
Chapters
Today we want to talk about Gestalt language processing again. I know I've done this video before, but recently I've gotten loads of questions about this. Every other day on our email inbox, we'll get, oh, man. My kid is a GLP gestalt language processor. And we're at stage, whatever. How can you help us? And so on and so forth. I've been seeing on the Internet and different articles, whether it's professional or not, they would say something like 50% of children are Gestalt language learners. That's why we're teaching them the wrong way and we're doing them a disservice. Right? There are some titles that say like 75 to 85% autistic children are Gestalt processors. There's a lack of evidence for these numbers and these claims, and I really think that we need to clear out some stuff today. Okay. It's a big generalization, and I think that most of it is the new thing and how we look at language assessments, treatments, and so on. And it's a very professional type of topic. So I just want to tell you some of my thoughts here. And I might get into some heated discussions in the comment section. But anyways, we start now. So things about Gestalt languaging processing is that it's not a mix. It's not either or it should be a mix. So when it's mixed up, it means some words are learned in a gestalt way. Gestalt just means a whole thing. You know, it's not an English word per se. I think it's from German or something, or French. I'm not sure. The general meaning in this context is that Gescholt is like people learn chunks of language, but that's not always 100% true. It could be a mix. Right? You do see children who are learning analytically, meaning word by word in their own grammatical roles and so on, they do have gestalt phrases. Okay, so it's not either or, it's a mix. And it doesn't mean, like, your child cannot learn analytically meaning word by word if they have a lot of phrases. And frozen phrases is the word that I like to call it. Because if a child learns from, like a song or like YouTube videos, those phrases are frozen and cannot be manipulated in a different way in a very easy way, in a very flexible way. So that's what makes me consider, like, the GLP stages very rigid, because most of the time is like, the stages go through. You need to give them More scripts to use. You're trying to tell them that more. Oh, there are new set of phrases that are meaningful and easy, and then you can mix and match those later on. So I don't see. My personal opinion, also professional opinion, is that what's the point of teaching another phrase when you can just teach a word? What's the difference? I don't see the difference. In fact, a phrase might be even harder than teaching the word. And if we say that children learn in phrases and they prefer it that way, I don't see how that's actually legit because a word is much shorter than a phrase. So if you tell me that a child can learn a phrase better than a word, that's just saying if you learn a foreign language, you're trying to learn like a phrase rather than just a word, it doesn't make sense. And most of the time, why children pick up those phrases is because of, number one, it's interesting to hear it. And number two, it's been repeated many times in the correct context. Right. And so these rules are also the same with learning any word out there. And most of the time in the gestalt learning processing theory thing, and it's a theory, guys, is that the stages generally cannot be skipped or should not be skipped. There are different types of approaches to dealing with language development. I'll just tell you like a few. First one is if a child is kind of lacking in verbal, like they're stuck with single words, we will teach them some functional language for survival situations, such as, can I please use the bathroom, please? Because we have had a few children all over the world who are deemed nonverbal in our programs, right? Deemed non verbal by the schools. But when they're at home teaching, taught by their mothers and fathers, they're actually speaking in short phrases. We're teaching them how to do it, but when they're outside, it's very hard for them to get those languages out. And therefore we have to teach a bunch of functional languages that are real quick. For instance, to this day, my functional survival phrase in Spanish is how much When I went to Mexico, which was 10 years ago, I still remember it. Does that mean I'm a gestalt language learner? Right. Quanta questa. Right. I still remember it, and I don't really know what that really means. Like how to chop it up and use it in different ways. Right. Does that mean I'm a glp? No, it's because those are my survival ways of using the phrases in a situation that I'm not accustomed to. And the same for children. Okay. And the other thing is like the other approach is that maybe we should teach like a lot of vocabs, high frequency words that are single words, right? And then we'll start to combine them. And that's the thing that I like a lot more because at this point in time, if you have functional language that is in phrases that will get you in and out daily and then on the side you teach all the words as we talked about in the previous video. If you haven't, go check it out, the four stages. It's about words, verbs, and then it's childlike sentences and then adult sentences. So all we need to do is to bombard a child with like nouns and, and, and verbs, all the single words, the concepts, locatives, whatever, and then teach them to combine them. Right? And that's how it is. And then another problem that we see is that autism and echolalia doesn't mean a child is a gestalt learner. I've linked some resources down below some references that like echolalia in itself isn't equated to gestalt learning processing. Echolalia. There are many communicative functions, whether if it's a child is on the spectrum or not. E in itself is a way to learn language for a lot of typical developing children. Right? And E also serves as a lot of coping mechanisms for autistic children. That doesn't mean they are gestalt language processing. They might have some characteristics of which and so you have to understand that and you need to understand that. Glp, Gestalt language processing. This is a style of therapy, a style like when people go into the mind of using glp, they will do the assessment, do the treatment, do all the reports and whatever in the lens of gestalt process. Singh. Okay. And we can't assume that all autistic children and, and all people who fit the criteria, we should only use these set of methods with them. Okay. Some children do appear as if they are communicating through gestalts, through phrases that are stuck. Okay. But at the same time, do you understand the reason why it was like that in the first place and why the language wasn't flexible? Was it because they didn't have enough vocab from the very beginning? Did they not have a language rich environment? And is it because that they don't have enough play skills to play with toys and use the correct words at the right place at the right time and they would rather watch YouTube videos rather than playing with toys. And therefore, when they're watching YouTube videos and then they get exposed to these phrases that are like, keep on popping up, right? And to tell you, the funniest gestalt that I've ever heard of was a mother from Malaysia, and she would say, oh, my kid doesn't talk, but he would say blackpink in your area, whatever it is. So, you know, like, it's just because it keeps on repeating and it's catchy. Okay, so anyways, that's enough of my rant here about like, gee, I hope that all this whatever, thing that helps you to cope and learn and teach your child is a good thing. But don't lean on it too much to think that it's a source of truth. Because everything that we know in this industry is a theory. And the theory is only made to become true through practice. So if you practice something, you need to understand that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And most of the time it's a lot of tweaking and individual, you know, kind of feedback and we have to work it through. Okay, that's it for this video. If you haven't, please go to agents of Speech.com course to grab all the free courses that we've made now. We used to sell and now it's all free on a community. Because I feel like so many parents actually like all the questions you ask in the comments or the emails that I get are easily answered with the courses that we made. Okay, so that's it for today. I'll see you in the next video. Bye. Bye.
