When it comes to gestalt learning, the whole is greater than all of its parts. So gestalt thinkers see the whole picture as more important than the individual pieces or components. Instead of learning one part at a time, they learn in chunks called gestalts.
As a result, they also learn language in chunks. Think short phrases or a whole sentence, for instance. In contrast, a non-gestalt learner would learn language one word at a time.
Gestalt Learning & Hyperlexia: What Does it Mean to be a Gestalt Learner? | And Next Comes L – Hyperlexia Resources
In the context of hyperlexia, gestalt processing (sometimes referred to as gestalt philosophy or gestalt psychology) simply refers to learning in chunks. It is “top-down” processing often referred to with the adage, “the whole is more than the sum of its parts.” Research on gestalt processing is ongoing to determine its importance in learning and processing in all individuals. As of now, gestalt processing is thought to be an early stage of the learning process that all learners experience.
Let’s CHAT about Hyperlexia: Gestalt Processing – CHAT
Many autistic children develop language with a gestalt language acquisition style. In this Editorial, we argue that embracing gestalt language development is a fundamental neurodiversity-affirmative practice and we make clinical and research recommendations to promote understanding and respect for this alternative developmental pathway.
Analytic language acquisition describes how children learn language as individual words and, over time, join well-rehearsed single words to produce longer and more grammatically complex utterances (Peters, 1983). Gestalt language acquisition describes when children learn language in longer chunks, known as gestalts: whole phrases, sentences or conversations heard in real life or through media, memorised and reproduced verbatim, often without an implicit understanding of the gestalt’s lexical, semantic or syntactic structure (Prizant, 1982; Prizant & Rydell, 1984). A commonly used example of a gestalt is ‘Do you want a cookie?’ to mean ‘I want a cookie’ or, more generally, ‘I want something to eat’. Gestalts can be reproduced with the exact same prosodic features (pace, rhythm, intonation) and non-verbal forms (gestures, facial expressions) as were originally observed and are often linked to specific contextual factors and emotional meaning.
Analytic and gestalt language acquisition styles exist on a continuum, with many people learning through and using both (Gernsbacher et al., 2016; Peters, 1983). Gestalt language is part of everyday discourse; many of us use gestalts that are widely understood by our speech community, for ease, convention, emphasis and creative expression (‘it never rains but it pours!’). For some autistic children, gestalt language processing is the dominant language learning style. This manifests in their characteristic language differences, including immediate echolalia, delayed echolalia, ‘stereotyped’, ‘idiosyncratic’ or ‘formulaic language’, and ‘verbal routines’ (Prizant, 1982; Prizant & Rydell, 1984). Some autistic individuals continue to rely upon individualised gestalts (those not shared by the wider speech community) as their main linguistic form throughout their life. Others go on to recognise words as individual units of meaning and develop more conventional/analytic linguistic skills (Blanc, 2012; Blanc et al., 2023), but may also continue to use individualised gestalts. The primary author is an autistic individual who uses mainly conventional language but also regular individualised gestalts related to emotional situations, including ‘definitely called a mushroom burger, definitely this exit!’, used when someone is wrong but thinks they are right, stemming from two situations in which her partner had been convinced about something (name of a recipe, exit from a motorway) but had actually been incorrect.
Embracing gestalt language development as a fundamental neurodiversity-affirmative practice – Amanda Haydock, Louisa Harrison, Katy Baldwin, Kathy Leadbitter, 2024
The conceptual confusion around gestalt language, combined with neuro-normative frameworks that make assumptions around ‘ideal’ developmental trajectories and seek to erase autistic characteristics, has led to widespread pathologisation of gestalt language within clinical approaches targeting language development in autistic children. A recent systematic review (Blackburn et al., 2023) identified 15 studies of interventions aiming to reduce or eliminate echolalia. A majority of these were behaviourist approaches adopting strategies (e.g. differential reinforcement, tact training, redirection) to actively reduce echolalic utterances, with the explicit premise that gestalt language development is undesirable and interferes with ‘normal’ language development and social acceptance (Blackburn et al., 2023). More developmentally oriented approaches (e.g. Aldred et al., 2018; Sussman, 1999) acknowledge the communicative function of gestalts and advise communicative partners to accept their use, but to model phrases that are more commonly understood, in the hope that the child will instead adopt these alternative forms. The implicit goal here is to replace gestalt use with language considered more appropriate by communicative partners. Developmental approaches also often focus on supporting non-verbal socio-cognitive skills, particularly joint attention, with the assumption that this trajectory is optimal for language development in all children, including gestalt language learners. This is despite evidence that some autistic children learn language in a range of inherently atypical ways, including without neurotypical joint attentional skills (Kissine et al., 2023; Mottron & Gagnon, 2024). Other approaches attempt to teach chunks of language through repetition and rote learning (e.g. Frost et al., 2002), with the premise that learners will memorise and reproduce the ‘right’ words in a particular situation. This strategy might lead to some static functional phrases but, unlike naturally acquired gestalts, those words will not necessarily be associated with meaning, context and emotion, and this approach is therefore unlikely to result in further communicative growth (Whitehouse et al., 2020).
Each of these approaches falls short of neurodiversity-affirmative practice that (a) works with a child’s natural developmental trajectory; (b) really understands gestalt language acquisition as a way of processing and learning language; (c) values authentic autistic expression as fundamental to identity, agency and well-being, and (d) views the communication difficulties experienced by autistic people as a product of the double empathy problem (Milton et al., 2022) and therefore places responsibility onto communicative partners for bridging gaps in communication and understanding. In this section, we propose four ways to move towards embracing gestalt language development.
Embracing gestalt language development as a fundamental neurodiversity-affirmative practice – Amanda Haydock, Louisa Harrison, Katy Baldwin, Kathy Leadbitter, 2024
Embracing gestalts means welcoming and appreciating them as quick, easy and efficient ways for an individual to communicate needs, preferences, situational understanding, memories and emotions, and a fun way of building connections with others, manifesting often under-appreciated competencies in social-emotional understanding (Sterponi & Shankey, 2014; Yu & Sterponi, 2023). An example from our personal experience will demonstrate this:
Fred used to intensively watch a cartoon called ‘The Octonauts’. In one episode, two characters – Captain Barnacles and Kwazii – are aboard a submarine and encounter a sea creature in need of help. The other Octonauts are all asleep. Captain Barnacles and Kwazii have a concerned conversation to make a plan. Captain Barnacles says that they need to sound the alarm and adds in a conspiratorial whisper ‘but just in the launch bay’ (so as not to wake the other Octonauts). Recently, Fred’s mum, stressed about an important work call, had a concerned conversation with Fred emphasising he needed to be quiet so as not to disturb the call. Fred listened and added in a conspiratorial whisper ‘but just in the launch bay’.
Fred’s gestalt ‘but just in the launch bay’ communicated cleverly, resourcefully and quickly to his mother that he understood her situation (as similar to the Octonauts’ characters), and what he needed to do. Interventions have a key role to play in supporting interactional partners to value gestalts as an intuitively autistic and emotionally and contextually situated approach to communication and a source of enjoyment, creativity and positive expression of one’s neurodivergence (Cohn et al., 2023; Sterponi & Shankey, 2014).
Embracing gestalt language development as a fundamental neurodiversity-affirmative practice – Amanda Haydock, Louisa Harrison, Katy Baldwin, Kathy Leadbitter, 2024
