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  • Learning a Second Language as a Neurodivergent Student (Child or Adult!)

    If you’re autistic or ADHD and you’ve struggled with learning a foreign language you are not alone! The typical class structures are not made for our brains.


    Growing up I had no idea I was autistic.

    I was an early talker, a self taught reader, and my social differences were percieved as “shy.”

    Flash forward thirty years and I am learning so much about myself alongside my autistic child. For one thing, our brains process language completely differently than neurotypicals.

    If you want to do a deep dive into language development I suggest starting with Alexandria Zachos of Meaningful Speech. She has a lot of free resources on her blog and Instagram.

    While I was learning to support my child’s speech development I had some big epiphanies about my own use of language and specifically why I struggled with Spanish classes in university.


    Neurotypical humans learn speech word by word.

    This is why most babies point at objects to learn their names. They learn a bunch of single words and eventually use them like building blocks to make sentences.

    This is the way foreign language classes are structured because this is the way most brains process language.

    I’m thinking of the times in class we would recite conjugations – as if that was at all useful outside the context of a sentence. 🫠

    Drawing of brain with colorful paint splatters over the top

    Autistic humans (and some ADHDers) learn speech in chunks. 🤯

    Our natural language progression is to pick up phrases or sentences like shiny objects.

    Bonus points for musicality, expression, or relating to our interests.

    Once we have enough chunks we naturally start to mix and match.


    How can we use this to teach (or learn) a second language?

    Now we know why traditional curriculum aren’t going to work for us.

    So what do we do instead?

    1. If you do use a curriculum look for something that introduces phrases. Not words. 💬

    Learning individual words is not helpful for gestalt language processors.

    We need to see them in action.

    Even if you find a curriculum that does this, you’re still going to need to supplement it to really engage a neurodivergent student.

    2. We need hear a human native speaker. 🧑

    Because we’re picking up on the whole language gestalt – including intonation.

    Google AI is not the way forward here.

    This doesn’t mean you need a private tutor, but whatever you are watching or listening to should be a real human who is a native speaker of the language you are learning.

    3. Find expressive & interesting material. 📺

    We’re incredibly lucky to live in a time where our favorite TV shows are probably dubbed over in multiple languages. Here’s the secret sauce where you engage with your student about whatever they are most passionate about.

    We are currently loving the Spanish dubs of Numberblocks on Netflix. (My kid literally falls asleep listening to the soundtrack – which is also available in Spanish!)

    I find that it’s easier to pick up on language if you’re watching shows that are made for emerging speakers (toddlers). Vocabulary is simpler and the speed of speech is (usually) slower.

    But we also love watching Totoro in Japanese.

    Gif of Totoro sleeping in a peaceful green space with butterflies fluttering overehad

    There’s something to be said for the immersion of watching something you love. Before my child was fluent in English he was singing the theme song to Totoro in Japanese.

    Sometimes it’s about what speaks to your heart.

    4. Sing! 🎶

    Our brains engage with music on a different level than spoken language. Sometimes neurodivergent folks even sing before speaking.

    99% of what I do remember from Spanish class was from songs.

    There are so many YouTube channels for songs.

    Super Simple Songs has translations for Spanish, Japanese, and Portuguese.

    Just search for children’s songs in whatever language you want to learn.

    Or jump in the deep end and try translating a pop song. I did this for Kudai’s Quiero after studying abroad in Mexico. It’s twenty years later and I still know it by heart.

    5. Consider auditory processing supports. 🎧

    Not all neurodivergent folks struggle with auditory processing, but plenty of us do. Sometimes I can’t “hear” sounds unless I see them.

    If you’re watching a show or YouTube channel look at your options for captions. Captions in the native language are really helpful. But sometimes they do differ from the recorded audio so you have to watch out for that. (This is always the case even with English.) Or English captions can help with understanding the context.

    Another great tool for students who need to see to hear is AAC.

    David already had the Proloquo2Go app as a support for communicating in English. He hasn’t used his AAC in months so I set up a second user in Spanish. (I’m sure there’s a way to set up a bilingual user too.)

    It looks like this. When you tap the word the tablet speaks it.

    Screenshot of AAC app. Icons of basic vocabulary (eat, please, thank you) with Spanish words under each image.

    I wish this app were not so expensive.

    But language curriculum is also quite an investment. I wanted to mention this because it is such a powerful tool. Since we already have it – using it for a second language is an exciting way to put that investment to good use.

    I started with a template for an emerging speaker and then customized folders with phrases from Numberblocks.

    It’s really important to put in phrases for our neurodivergent kids in addition to the single words that come preloaded.

    I’ll probably write a second post specifically about how we use this.

    The caveat is that AAC tablets are not very expressive. This is like a speaking dictionary, but it will not teach you the natural musicality of a language. You still need a native speaker (in real life, recordings, TV, or YouTube) to model language. This is a tool for making that material accessible.

    6. Read books together! 📖

    I love bilingual books with two languages printed side by side.

    But I learned the hard way to look for books that are for “early readers” versus classic favorites.

    La oruga muy hambrienta by Eric Carle The Very Hungry Caterpillar Bilingual version with green and red caterpillar collage

    La oruga muy hambrienta is a mouthful.

    While I didn’t learn much conversational Spanish during my time studying abroad, I am fairly confident at sight reading words. (It helps that the sounds in Spanish are very consistent versus what we’re used to in English.)

    If you’re not comfortable reading aloud yourself (yet) try audiobooks!

    But it’s also okay to be imperfect and make mistakes while you are learning. It’s all part of the process. If you’re a parent reading with a kid – seeing you make mistakes and correct yourself can be a good life lesson.

    7. Practice with friends. 👭

    Once you have phrases use them in your daily life.

    Weave in what you’ve learned with your family or a friend group. My little extrovert is already having short conversations with native Spanish speakers in our area.

    Follow his lead and look for opportunities to practice and learn in community.

    8. Play! 🕹️

    Try simple games in another language. Learn the phrases needed for a card game. Play “I spy” or charades. Put the words you’ve learned to good use.

    You may even find video games or apps with multiple languages. Toddler apps are designed for emergent speakers (we love Eric Carle’s), but they do tend to focus on words versus phrases. If you’re picking up individual words (numbers, colors, nouns) try to learn phrases too so the words don’t get “stuck.”


    Toolbox for ND Language Learners 🧰

    1. Learn phrases and sentences. Not words.
    2. Learn from a human native speaker. Not AI.
    3. Find expressive & interesting material.
    4. Learn songs!
    5. Try captions and AAC.
    6. Read books for “early readers.”
    7. Speak the language in daily life.
    8. Play!

    If you found this useful I’d love to hear from you. I’m always open to chat or share resources, but simply hearing that you enjoyed this will make my day.

    Email Sarah.


    To anyone who’s just wandered in.

    Hi, nice to meet you!

    I’m Sarah Shotts, late diagnosed autistic artist, writer, and mum to an autistic child who I’m home educating.

    Selfie holding a copy of Entwined in my studio with my kid playing video games on the daybed behind me. I have on a Rose Apothecary shirt, green corduroy overshirt, and green glasses. I have short brownish hair and blue eyes.

    I write eclectic emails each month about creativity, neurodivergence, and (quite frankly) whatever my current hyperfixation happens to be.

    Sign up here if you’d like monthly-ish emails.

    Open airmail envelope with blue and green stripes

    Read more: Learning a Second Language as a Neurodivergent Student (Child or Adult!)
  • LIFE IS NOT ABOUT READING OUT A BLUEPRINT, IT’S ABOUT CREATING FLEXIBLE RULES AND RESOURCES FROM WHICH DIVERSE FORMS MIGHT EMERGE.”

    Philip Ball, How Life Really Works

    via Austin Kleon

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  • This seems like another potential language for whole to part thinking (gestalt cognitive processing):

    Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe wrote in “Rewilding: The Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery,” rewilding pays attention “to the emergent properties of interactions between ‘things’ in ecosystems … a move from linear to systems thinking.”

    Rewilding: The Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery

    Source: We Need to Rewild the Internet

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  • Continued reading indicated this area of research may have originated with Dr. Barry Prizant and then abandoned by his peers (along with Gestalt Language Processing.)

    Here is an early study of his (bear in mind this was written a long time ago and is more deficit based than his current work.)

    Finally, a gestalt mode of cognitive processing is one in which events are remembered or retained with relatively little analysis. Linguistic utterances may or may not be part of such events. A gestalt mode must be viewed in contrast to an analytic mode in which experiences or events are analyzed and segmented into meaningful components based upon prior experience. In an analytic mode, irrelevancies or redundancies are given little attention while new or significant information is abstracted.

...considered analogous to the distinction between the concepts of episodic memory and semantic memory processing cited often in the literature on memory in normal children and adults.

"in episodic memory an item is remembered as a whole, with little analysis of its component parts and structure"

Retrieval of information from episodic memory involves retrieval of events themselves, as experienced within specific contexts, or knowledge about highly repetitive or routinized activity.

semantic memory involves information abstracted from experiences which is organized conceptually for long-term retention.
    autistic persons demonstrate much greater success in nonlanguage tasks that can be accomplished by a wholistic or gestalt processing approach.
    episodic and semantic memory do not represent a clear-cut dichotomy. A continuum is suggested, ranging from the internal representation of context-specific events (i.e., gestalt, episodic representation) to decontex-tualized generalized knowledge (i.e., abstract symbolic
    Cognitive Processing and Learning Patterns in
Autism
The literature on autism is replete with descriptions of wholistic or gestalt learning

excellent rote memory for both visual and auditory information and proficiencies in tasks demanding visu-al-spatial judgment and visual-spatial pattern

    PDF (Source)

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  • What is GCP?

    Gestalt cognitive processing is when experiences are held as primarily episodic memories. Gestalt cognitive processors process events as a “whole” that is made up of very specific parts. They are whole-to-part thinkers. They have a hyper-awareness of specifics and details in events that make up the entirety of the event, episode, or “whole” for them. … If something within that whole changes, it can be very distressing for a gestalt cognitive processor.

    Source, Meaningful Speech

    Alexandria Zachos, MS, CCC-SLP/L

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  • Understanding Perfectionism
    by Austin Kleon

    Morgan Schafler says that perfectionists are people who “consistently notice the difference between an ideal and a reality,” and more often than not, have “a compulsion to bridge the gulf between reality and an ideal.” In her view, the perfectionist holds a kind of creative tension that contains an energy capable of creation or destruction.

    Read more: untitled post 156077643
  • What does gestalt mean?

    The word Gestalt is used in modern German to mean the way a thing has been “placed,” or “put together.” There is no exact equivalent in English. “Form” and “shape” are the usual translations; in psychology the word is often interpreted as “pattern” or “configuration.”

    via Brittanica

    ADHD autism gestalt cognitive processing neurodivergence rejection sensitivity

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  • My initial research into GCP seems to originate within the context of SLP who specialize in GLP. One SLP referred to monotropism in relation to GCP.

    I’ve saved some quotes here, but I don’t completely agree with everything presented as monotropism in this paper. I think this is based on somewhat outdated research and a narrow view of autism.

    “To a person in an attention tunnel every unanticipated change is abrupt and is truly, if briefly, catastrophic: a complete disconnection from a previous safe state, a plunge into a meaningless blizzard of sensations, a frightening experience which may occur many times in a single day. Following such an episode it may take a long time for any other interest to emerge.”

    “For a monotropic thinker, if something does not work out as anticipated there are no alternatives available as there would be for a polytropic thinker. Instead of the projected outcome there is total disaster (Lawson, 1998). Total disaster is strongly demotivating.”

    “features of the environment which seem obvious to people with diffuse rather than tightly focused attention may be entirely missed.”

    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1362361305051398?download=true

    See also: https://monotropism.org

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  • Questions I’d like to explore… 🔬

    Is it perfectionism or is it GCP?

    Do we get stuck because we see the whole finished thing in our minds?

    Is it executive function or is it GCP?

    Do we struggle to find a way in because we are not sequential thinkers and seeing the whole is overwhelming?

    Can Iteration be a tool?

    The idea does not have to come out fully formed.

    What about “rejection sensitivity?”

    Could this be happening because we are reliving every rejection we’ve ever experienced? Does it also happen when we are already struggling with flaws (deviations from our internal gestalt) and someone points them out or criticizes it’s unbearable?

    How can we rewrite our gestalts?

    Can we make more space for imperfection, experimentation, iteration, and discovery?

    I think I’ve done this with gardening and pottery and it’s all to do with who I learned those things from and how I think about them. Can I invite that sense of ease and curiosity into other pursuits?

    Can we / HOW CAN WE rewrite our gestalts?

    Cross Pollination 🐝

    Find further research at #gestaltcognitiveprocessing.

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