Marge Blanc & Alexandria Zachos (Part 2): Supporting Gestalt Language Processing With AAC

This week, we present Part 2 of Chris and Rachel's interview with Marge Blanc and Alexandria Zachos, two SLPs who have written and presented about the Natural Language Acquisition framework (NLA) and Gestalt Language Processing. The NLA framework looks at the different ways that people, especially people with autism, develop language. One important aspect of this is “gestalts”which are strings of language that can be long or short, and are often tied to an emotional, meaningful, or dramatic experience. This portion of the interview focuses on Stage 2, 3, and 4 of the NLA framework and how these stages can inform our practices with AAC. To learn more about Stage 1, listen to Part 1 of this episode here.

Before the interview, Chris and Rachel discuss a listener question about putting “too many” symbols on a device versus not having enough symbols on the grid. They also discuss the reaction from some teachers when a student is “playing” with a device, and why it’s not a realistic expectation for a child learning language to completely avoid exploring and playing with their device.

Key ideas this week:

🔑 Stage 2 of the Natural Language Acquisition (NLA) framework is “Mitigated Gestalts”, where the person takes a chunk from one gestalt and a chunk from another gestalt and puts them together. They might also trim down a gestalt to be shorter, for example reducing “Don’t worry, I’ll help you find your Mama” to “Don’t worry”.

🔑 Stage 3 of the NLA framework, “Isolation of the Single Word,” a person who is gestalt language processing is able to recognize words as units and pull the words out of their slots. They also become referential and will begin to reference or point to things.

🔑 According to Marge, there is an impulse when a student gets to Stage Three of the NLA framework to jump to teaching all different kinds of grammar, but at this stage it’s really more about combining words together. If we go too fast and jump ahead, the student may gain splinter skills while failing to develop the foundational skills necessary to move to Stage 4.

🔑 Stage 4 of the NLA framework is “Beginning Grammar”, which is when we begin to start to see more of the novel utterances and combinations of two to three words together. Stages Five and Six involve complex to advanced grammar.

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