December, 2024
A December 26th article in a local Irish news website (Boyle Today) on the “Annual 5k Fun Run/Walk in aid of children and teenagers with Autism.”
It informs us that “All money raised will goes to RPM [Rapid Prompting Method] which pays for individual or group sessions with a practitioner.”
No mention of the complete lack of evidence base for RPM or of any of the many health, education, and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it.
A December 27th article in a local Tennessee newspaper (the Crossville Chronicle), entitled “FINDING HIS VOICE: Fairfield Glade man with nonverbal autism reveals tremendous verbiage through spelling to communicate program.
It reports on a “cutting-edge therapy,” later revealed to be S2C (Spelling to Communicate), has allowed a man who “does a limited amount of speaking and struggles to express simple thoughts” to be “eloquent and thoughtful in his writing.”
The article claims that there is “research pointing to a disconnect between the brain and body for individuals with autism” (there isn’t) and that “Spelling to Communicate addresses this disconnect by building the purposeful motor skills needed to point to letters, spell words, and ultimately express thoughts and ideas” (it doesn’t)
While his spoken language is limited to “short and often repetitive phrases” that communicate “ wants and needs,” the written language extracted from him via S2C contains “deep thoughts, demonstrate strong social skills. (Yes, according to the body-disconnect version of autism favored by S2C proponents, autism isn’t the social disorder it has been defined as being for the last 8 decades).
Beyond this, anticipating another development in autism news this year (see our last entry, below), one of his messages is this:
Time is showing that nonspeakers have capabilities of intellect created by a hand by a creator somewhere beyond this world. The life nonspeakers live is the miracle of spirituality existing on a tiny scale.
No mention of the complete lack of evidence base for S2C or of any of the many health, education, and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it.
A December 28th article in the Ohio news website Cleveland.com entitled “‘I’m free’: New communication method finally gives people with autism a voice.”
It describes how, for the first two decades, a young woman named Talia Zimmerman wasn’t able to communicate using more than a single word or two, and only for basic wants and needs: words like “water” and “ice cream.” But then her mother read the S2C-promoting book Underestimated and met a local boy who had purportedly been unlocked by it, so they did, too, at the rate of $85 an hour.
The article notes the evidence against “a related program, called Facilitated Communication,” and also acknowledges that S2C also has its detractors, including the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA). It even quotes ASHA as saying that S2C “strips people of their human right to independent communication because the technique relies on an aide for prompting;” and Diane Paul, ASHA’s senior director of clinical issues for ASHA, as asking “why the letter board (or keyboard) needs to be held by the facilitator, and not placed on a table or easel.”
But then the article turns back to the mother, who is convinced it works: “This is the only thing that has worked,” she said. “You watch these young adults spelling – I don’t know what else people need.” It also happily attributes S2C-generated words to Talia, with no appreciation for the questions raised by the ASHA statement about whether they are really hers:
[W]hen asked recently how she felt the first time someone spoke to her as an adult, Talia… replied: “I felt a sense of relief. Someone finally believes in me. I’m free.”
The article proceeds to provide a description of how S2C works, noting that “autistic individuals typically have poor motor skills, which makes pointing at letters or using a keyboard very challenging,” but not the pointing at the larger letters of letterboards. (In fact, there is no evidence of motor-based inability to point in autism). It also claims that pointing to letterboards “pointing to a letter board uses gross motor skills, powered by large muscles” [it isn’t], and not fine motor skills, which are typically significantly impaired by autism.” (in fact, some individuals with autism have fine motor difficulties, some have gross motor difficulties, some have both, and some have neither).
Regardless Talia Zimmerman, has “progress[ed] to a keyboard, using a single finger to type words into a computer.”
The local S2C practitioners who work with Talia insist that they “are absolutely not prompting their clients.” One of them stated, as “the biggest proof” of this “is when they tell us something we don’t know.” She also notes that “The goal for every client… is independent communication, initiated by the client.” She makes no mention, however, of ever conducting a simple facilitator-blinded message-passing test.
Tellingly, the article notes that “Talia, as well as most participants in the program, are far more proficient at spelling when they’re working with their professional partners than with parents, siblings and others.”
The article also notes that it’s unclear “where Talia.. learned how to spell and acquired so much knowledge,” quoting her mother as saying “She’s never picked up a book, never surfed the internet that I’m aware of,” said Lisa. Her father speculates that “perhaps she learned about the Mona Lisa while watching a TV program with him on Italy.”
“She picks up information in ways that other people don’t,” he said. “I think her brain absorbs information at a greater depth than other people.”
The possibility that the information attributed to Talia through S2C is actually knowledge held by her facilitators, and not by her, goes unmentioned.
A December 30th article in Spectrum News entitled Nina: A Nonspeaker Who Found Her Voice.
A re-publication of author Debra Brause’s S2C-promoting piece in Psychology Today, which I blogged about earlier.
No mention of the complete lack of evidence base for S2C or of any of the many health, education, and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it.
Posts
