Tag Archives: communication

30 Jun

Thoughts from a Therapist: What is Gestalt Language Processing?

Originally published on Sensory Integration Education on 28 May 2024.

In this month’s Thoughts from a Therapist blog, Anna Willis takes a look at Gestalt Language Processing, how this differs from Analytic Language Processing – where we build from single words upwards – and why Gestalt Language Processors are often misunderstood. 

When I first started working with autistic children (which I discovered at a recent presentation was apparently 20 years ago. How did that happen?!), echolalia was often seen as a stim rather than as communication. At the STAR conference a few years ago, I heard about Marg Blanc for the first time and her work on Gestalt Language Processing (GLP). Now bear with me, because this is not my area of expertise, but it’s certainly something I’m interested in right now, hence deciding to write about it this month! This body of work started developing in the 1980s by looking initially at Natural Language Acquisition (NLA). For most of us, we acquire language word by word. This is called ‘analytic language processing’ – where we build from single words upwards. In GLP, language is learnt in ‘gestalts’ which are whole phrases and can be learnt from songs, stories, videos etc.

Gestalt Language Processors are often misunderstood because understanding the context to a phrase is crucial to making sense of it. I have worked with a young person for 10 years now. When I first met her, she recited the whole of a poem as she walked into our assessment room. However, she wasn’t able to answer our questions. Recently, I went to see her after a long break. She was in her room watching her tablet. She didn’t look up but I knew she’d registered me and she tapped on to a separate video (at incredible speed!) and I could see the subtitles of the video clip say “I miss your nuclear fusion”. I felt all warm and fuzzy! I may again have misinterpreted some communication but it felt like her way of telling me she’d missed me. It was such a tiny moment and would have been so easy to miss had I not been looking at her screen or if I’d been an outsider who could have presumed she hadn’t registered my presence.

Gestalts have meaning. We may not be able to understand them but that doesn’t mean it isn’t communication. We may have to do a lot more work to unpick, such as finding out the context of when and where they learnt the phrase (for instance, a gestalt could be “sit down now” which could mean “I’d like a snack” because that was the phrase they learnt and linked to having a snack).

Click here to access Marg Blanc’s website if you’d like to learn more about GLP.

Happy chatting!

Anna

Thoughts From a Therapist is a regular series written by Advanced SI Practitioner Anna Willis about something that piqued her professional interest or inspired her in some way over the last month. Anna, an occupational therapist and owner of Active Play Therapies, has over ten years of experience working with children and adults with a range of learning disabilities and autism.

30 Jun

Thoughts from a Sleep Deprived Therapist

Originally published on Sensory Integration Education on 26 February 2024.

In this month’s Thoughts From a Therapist article, Anna Willis, Occupational Therapist and Advanced Practitioner in Sensory Integration, looks at the sensory aspects of sleep and the emotional and cognitive impact on everyone involved.

Ah, a good night’s sleep. Something I’ve been dreaming of (ironically!) since the end of pregnancy. My little one is now 15 months old and yet to treat us to sleeping through the night. It’s got me thinking about the sensory aspects of sleep and the emotional and cognitive impact on everyone involved.

Our health visitor is now starting to work with a sleep specialist for us. She showed me an image of a circus tent, likening the aspects needed for sleep as the ropes holding the tent up. One being ‘environment’ which as an OT, I have already spent a long time considering from a sensory perspective. The black-out blinds are up, the white noise is on (then off another night because maybe it’s too loud (?!), then on again the next and repeat), the heating is perfected to 18 degrees, the sleeping bag is tog matched to the chart, the routine is in place and I’ve perfected my dull yet reassuring “It’s sleepy time now” statement.

Oh, and the amount of money I have spent on gadgets that will get my toddler to sleep is verging on horrifying. I’m looking at you Sooth ‘n’ Snuggle Otter, Starlight Polar Bear, Wubbanub, funny mattress vibrating Zed thing, Merino wool sleeping bag, silky comfort blankets, a myriad of dummies (all of which are rejected), soft toys with the “right” squishiness, soothing sleep music apps…! So the environment has been well and truly OT-ed to the max.

Which has got me thinking. Of all the equipment recommendations we give. Of the information we impart. If sleep is involved – it’s a whole new level of desperation for it to work. And also a whole new level of brain fog for clients, parents or caregivers to cope with. Implementing new things on top of sleep deprivation is hard. Doing anything that may result in less sleep seems almost painful.

So if your clients mention poor sleep (which a lot of our sensory friends do struggle with), bear in mind if they or their caregivers are also sleep-deprived as a result, they are likely to need more concrete things to work on. Write things down. Keep it simple. And keep the equipment recommended as brief as possible to avoid them buying everything in desperation (ahem).

Right, I’m off to Google more things to buy that will guarantee me a good night’s sleep!

Sweet dreams,

Anna

Thoughts From a Therapist is a regular series written by Advanced SI Practitioner Anna Willis about something that piqued her professional interest or inspired her in some way over the last month. Anna, an occupational therapist and owner of Active Play Therapies, has over ten years of experience working with children and adults with a range of learning disabilities and autism.

30 Jun

Thoughts From a Therapist: The Double Empathy Problem

Originally published on Sensory Integration Education on 29 July 2021.

This is a new regular series written by Advanced SI Practitioner Anna Willis about something that piqued her professional interest or inspired her in some way over the last month. Anna, an occupational therapist and owner of Active Play Therapies, has over 10 years of experience working with children and adults with a range of learning disabilities and autism:

“Recently I was asked to offer some social skills training. Until the other month, I would have happily entered into discussions as well as recommending and supporting interventions targeted at ‘improving’ social skills. However, listening to Dr Damian Milton talk about the double empathy problem has changed my thinking on this.

“The double empathy problem is the idea that instead of solely autistic people finding social communication difficult,  it is actually a two way street – non-autistic people find it difficult to communicate with autistic people also.

“Crompton et al (2020) did an interesting study looking at information transfer – their study had chains of 8 people who needed to pass a story on, one person to another. The study found that non-autistic chains and autistic chains performed similarly in passing on the information. The difficulties arose with mixed chains sharing a lot less detail and reporting less rapport.

“The Therapist Neurodiversity Collective have a helpful poster around what they think are helpful skills to teach: self-advocacy, self-regulation and perspective taking. Narrowing it down to those 3 skills really helped me. I’ll be making my recommendations much more targeted and inclusive, and trying to be mindful of my own part in the two-sided nature of communication, as well as a bigger focus on supporting clients to self-advocate when possible.”