Executive Functioning & Gestalt Language Processors
What do executive functioning skills have to do with speech, language, and play progress in Gestalt Language Processors? A lot.
Whether your GLP client is seeming ‘stuck’ or is moving swiftly and smoothly through their language acquisition process, my Speech Therapy PD course with Amy Zembriski, MS, CCC-SLP can help you orient yourself to their skills, challenges, and where to go next.
This episode of The Gestalt Get-Together aims to equip you with knowledge and ready-to-use strategies for boosting executive functions in gestalt processors and other neurodivergent children. Amy Zembriski, a speech-language pathologist with rich and varied experience, talks about the complex ways that perception, attention, and non-verbal working memory combine to influence a neurodivergent child’s ability to access and use language effectively, flexibly, and generatively with a variety of communication partners.
What is Executive Functioning?
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s practice portal describes executive functioning as “a group of interrelated cognitive processes, including but not limited to controlling initiation and inhibition; sustaining and shifting attention; organization; goal setting, and completion; and determining plans for the future.” Some experts in this research and practice area posit that there are three core umbrellas of executive function to be working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility (Nyongesa et al., 2019).
Amy takes us to an even more granular level, explaining how we as speech-language pathologists (as well as caregivers of gestalt language processors) can strengthen the foundational skills of perception and attention, which will then have a cascade effect into higher-level abilities like metacognition, self-monitoring, reasoning skills, complex problem-solving, and perspective-taking.
How Executive Functioning Differences Affect Gestalt Language Processors
Perception is a child’s ability to take in environmental stimuli through their senses and be aware of it. Attention is a child’s ability and capacity to focus on stimuli, relevant tasks, parse out what is important, and ignore distracting stimuli. In the autistic neurotype (which I consider to be considerably overlapped with the Gestalt Processing profile), executive functioning differences are common. Janzen and Thaut (2018) write that individuals with autism have “difficulties to rapidly re-allocate attention to new spatial locations or target features, to filter task-irrelevant information, to share attention with others, and to coordinate attention between people and objects – especially in social contexts. It is clear that deficits of attention affect one’s ability to attend, engage, reciprocate, and learn, thus significantly impacting social development.“
Courchesne et al. (1994) describe how the challenges and reduced ability to filter out irrelevant information to the task at hand, as well as maintain control over attentional shifts may be related to the phenomena of perseveration, overselectivity, and restricted/special interests. These differences may stem from structural and functional atypicalities in the cerebellum.
Three Common Executive Functioning Challenges
- Perseveration: Perseveration is characterized by repetitive behaviors, thoughts, or motor actions. Sometimes, this can look like getting sticky on a movement, circuit, spoken gestalt, song, or thought loop. Looping can result in increased anxiety, which then further reduces capacity to engage in new, challenging, or socially-driven tasks. When a GLP client of mine is motorically looping around the room, he is often less able to take in my verbal modeling and acquire new language.
- Stimulus Overselectivity: This phenomenon is described is when autistic individuals focus in on a small subset of sensory cues or that they perceive as the most salient (e.g. a crumb on the carpet, the acoustic frequency of the flourescent lights) at the ‘loss’ of the sensory totality of the environment. When a GLP child is ‘zoomed in on’ the fibers of the carpet at circle time, she is less likely to be meaningfully engaging in reciprocal interactions with the teacher.
- Special/Restricted Interests: This phenomena refers to an autistic individual’s passionate, intense, and/or highly focused interest in an object, activity, topic, or sensation. These interests may be stimulating, fascinating, and/or regulating to them. When a GLP client is arranging items in rainbow order and experiencing distress at the approach of a therapist or caregiver, their nervous system may not be at a place to take in symbolic information yet (Courchesne et al., 1994).
Supporting Executive Functioning in Therapy
If a GLP is perseverating, overselecting on stimuli, or focused on a special interest, they may have less cognitive resources to find coherence in social interactions or novel/demanding tasks in your speech therapy session. So what do we do?
We’ve got you covered on where to start - Amy gives great examples in this episode of The Gestalt Get-Together about how to identify signs of perceptual and attentional challenges. In your listening, you’ll gain a better understanding of how these often-overlooked factors may contribute to what presents as receptive language delays or behavioral concerns.
After you complete the course, you will leave with practical strategies to strengthen perception and attention, which we believe are key areas that go beyond “just modeling” spoken language and are especially important for GLPs who seem to be in sticky or plateaued place in their language development.
By the end of this course, I hope that you will be able to:
- Explain why it is important to work on executive function skills and more specifically perception, attention, and non-verbal working memory. It is my aim that you can then explain how growing these skills can impact a child's ability to access and use language.
- We hope that you will be better able to identify signs of perception challenges in students and how these may influence what appears to be "receptive language" or "behavioral" difficulties.
- Finally, I hope you will be able to describe how to use practical strategies to support development of perception and attention to support language development beyond "just modeling," especially for gestalt language processors who appear "stuck."
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About the Presenter
Amy Zembriski, MBA, MS, CCC-SLP, is a certified speech-language pathologist with a diverse clinical background spanning acute care, skilled nursing facilities, schools, early intervention, and private practice. She has also served as an adjunct professor, supervising graduate students during their diagnostic clinical practicum. Amy is the owner of Speech Therapy Connections in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where she specializes in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and gestalt language processing. She provides expert support to families with autistic children, guided by a commitment to neurodiversity-affirming practices. Her passion lies in educating and empowering both professionals and families, fostering inclusive communication strategies that honor each child’s unique voice and developmental path.
References
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.). Executive Function Deficits (Practice Portal). Retrieved June, 4th, 2026, from https://www.asha.org/practice-portal/clinical-topics/executive-function-deficits/.
Courchesne, E., Townsend, J., Akshoomoff, N. A., Saitoh, O., Yeung-Courchesne, R., Lincoln, A. J., James, H. E., Haas, R. H., Schreibman, L., & Lau, L. (1994). Impairment in shifting attention in autistic and cerebellar patients. Behavioral neuroscience, 108(5), 848–865. https://doi.org/10.1037//0735-7044.108.5.848
Janzen, T. B., & Thaut, M. H. (2018). Rethinking the role of music in the neurodevelopment of autism spectrum disorder. Music & Science, 1, 2059204318769639. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2059204318769639?__cf_chl_f_tk=L2w20BVWJT5Q2J9TGQDN.DVGJKABAsg_HU_MJQtPpH0-1783013398-1.0.1.1-AR1y9FuO1uMK8rihByPrpsa54snVSRJFAZvygi7H_g0
Nyongesa, M. K., Ssewanya, D., Mutua, A. M., Chongwo, E., Scerif, G., Newton, C. R. J. C., & Abubakar, A. (2019). Assessing executive function in adolescence: A scoping review of existing measures and their psychometric robustness. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 311. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00311
