Natural language acquisition allows children to follow patterns and sounds that help them understand language and the world around them, beginning as early as infancy.
In this blog, we will discuss:
- What is natural language acquisition (NLA)?
- What is gestalt language development?
- What are the stages of NLA (The NLA Process)?
What is Natural Language Acquisition (NLA)?
Natural Language Acquisition (NLA) is the process of how many autistic children understand expression and language.
In the neurotypical population, analytic language processing is common. Children begin with babbling before they can form single words. Further listening to patterns, they can then piece together short phrases.
After fully understanding how to speak in sentences, solidified syntax and grammar is the final step to language development. For those who follow a natural language acquisition model, these milestones may look different. There is no right or wrong way to acquire language. Both analytic language and natural language processing modes are completely valid.
In “Language Acquisition On The Autism Spectrum: The Journey From Echolalia To Self-Generated Language” by Marge Blanc (M.A., CCC-SLP), we understand how language development can differ for autistic children. This is known as gestalt language acquisition. While their language development may differ from their peers, it’s essential to recognize their communication efforts!
What is Gestalt Language Development?
Gestalt language development is when language is learned in “chunks” (or large groups) – opposed to one word at a time. With gestalt language processing, children apply a meaning to entire phrases before being able to single out individual words.
Gestalt language processing is common in autistic children, though we are not completely sure why this occurs.
What Are The Signs of Gestalt Language Processors?
Gestalt language processors are individuals who learn in chunks or “gestalts.” Meaning is applied to the gestalt as individually as the person! It carries a meaning that is typically non-literal to the actual phrase being said.
Signs of a gestalt processor include:
- Delayed echolalia
- Intonation rich speech
- Unintelligible strings of language
- Speaking in the third person
- Pronoun or grammar errors
What are the Stages of NLA (The NLA Process)?
The Communication Development Center acknowledges their work as inspirational validation for autistic children’s language development. Their research allowed autistic children to be included in language development recognition and guided the work of future educators and speech-language pathologists.
Natural language acquisition for autistic children can be broken into four stages: echolalia, mitigated echolalia, isolation, recognition of single words, and self-generated grammar.
Stage One: Echolalia
The first stage is known as the “echolalia” stage. Individuals script whole gestalts, single word gestalts, or they may use strings of language with identifiable intonation patterns. An example would be using a repeated phrase or line from a song or movie.
Stage Two: Mitigated Echolalia
The second stage involves a process called mitigation. This is when the child takes parts of gestalts and combines them with other parts of other gestalts. They begin to break apart the whole scripts learned in stage one and combine parts of them into mitigated scripts.
Stage Three: Isolation and Recombination of Single Words
The third stage of echolalia is when a child begins to use single words and/or make new two-word combinations in the absence of grammar or syntax (word order).
Stage Four: Self-Generated Grammar
Stage four consists of putting together those single words from Stage 3 and making novel sentences and phrases. Grammar will start to appear but may be incorrect. This is ok! Grammar will begin to develop more in the final stages.
