The Spillover Effects of Therapy

Total Communication
24 hours ago
3 min read

Why Therapy Is Not Teaching, It’s Mediated Learning

The Spillover Effects of Therapy | Best Speech Therapy in Singapore | Total communication

Many parents think of therapy as “teaching,” a place where skills are directly taught, practised, and then checked off. But therapy is more than that. When done well, therapy spills over into every part of a child’s life - relationships, confidence, thinking, and communication.

At the heart of this is mediated learning, an idea from Reuven Feuerstein, who believed that meaningful change happens through intentional, guided interaction between two people. Therapy is not the mechanical transmission of knowledge. It is the art of mediation - shaping experiences so that learning becomes internalised, owned, and generalised.

Intentionality
The therapist begins with intention. Every gesture, tone, and pause has a purpose. Intentionality means we are not simply responding to a child’s behaviour; we are leading the child toward meaning. We decide what to highlight, how to pace it, and why it matters.

Example: In pretend play, when a therapist picks up a toy cup and says, “Let’s make tea for the rabbit,” she isn’t teaching vocabulary. She is creating a shared intention, a joint mental space where thought and emotion meet.
Reciprocity
Once intention is established, we look for reciprocity. The child’s response, a smile, a glance, a gesture, or a word, is not just feedback; it’s evidence of engagement. Each reciprocal exchange builds a bridge between therapist and child.

Over time, this cycle repeats — intentionality → reciprocity → intentionality → reciprocity. It is in this rhythm that connection and learning grow.
Meaning
Meaning arises between two people. It is co-constructed. The child begins to grasp why something matters, not just what it is. Meaning transforms an action into understanding: “We’re not just pouring pretend tea; we’re caring for someone.”

This is why play is so powerful. Through guided play, the therapist helps the child make sense of the world, emotionally, socially, and linguistically.
Transcendence
Feuerstein called this transcendence: the ability to take what is learned in one situation and apply it elsewhere. In therapy, transcendence is the spillover effect.
1. A child who learns to wait for a turn during a pretend café game starts waiting in real-life snack time.
2. A child who learns to read another’s expression in puppet play begins to notice how her friend feels.
3. A child who learns to use words to repair miscommunication in a story starts doing the same with parents or teachers.
These are not isolated skills; they are living competencies that grow beyond the therapy room.
Why Pretend Play Matters
Pretend play is one of the richest platforms for transcendence because it naturally activates multiple systems:
1. Joint attention — sharing focus with another
2. Working and episodic memory — remembering story sequences
3. Perspective-taking — understanding what others think or feel
4. Language and narrative organisation — sequencing, cause-effect, intentions, and emotions
When children enter pretend play, they learn to hold context, negotiate roles, and sustain symbolic meaning. Each of these abilities lays the foundation for flexible thinking and for language that truly connects.
The Therapist’s Role
The therapist is not a teacher in the traditional sense. We are mediators of experience, guiding, spotlighting, pacing, and shaping interactions so that meaning can be discovered.
When we do this well, the spillover happens naturally. A child who experiences emotional safety, reciprocity, and meaning in therapy begins to carry these capacities into school, home, and relationships.