Yes, many people with autism have abilities exceeding what we might presume. But given the massive risks of FC, it's our moral duty to demand proof of effective methodology and independent authorship.
Spelling methods are the only methods I’ve seen that effectively address the motor issues, including impulsivity. I typically do not see AAC devices introduced in a way that prevents impulsive selections. This hinders the nonspeaker’s ability to select what they truly want to select. This is why families are seeing success with spelling when they haven’t seen that same progress with years of other methods taught through speech therapy and special education.
People in favour of S2C/RPM talk a lot about 'motor issues'. I've now asked several to describe the motor issues that their family member is experiencing, e.g. what grip do they use for pens? Are they a wheelchair user?
Invariably, they report family members who struggle to use cutlery or dress themselves, and who are somewhere on a continuum between a palmar supinate and a tripod grip, but who are not a wheelchair user. At which point, I know they are sadly deluding themselves. Because I have an exceptionally gifted 6yo with a 3-4 year motor delay and that has NO resemblance to the disabilities that the families of spellers are reporting.
Literally, for 'whole body apraxia' to be wholly responsible for their profound disabilities, that family member would be a frequent, if not constant, wheelchair user because they wouldn't be able to control their body parts well enough to walk. Because *that* is what people with average intelligence and extreme motor disabilities look like - people who can't control their body well enough to sit up straight, who can't run without falling over, and who have quite mumbled speech. Nonetheless, their body movements, although clumsy, are made with intention.
Again, if you had uncontrollable impulsivity in your body movements, you would be constantly punching yourself in the face, dropping and throwing things (as with some people with Tourette's)- it wouldn't only miraculously kick in whenever someone offered you a letterboard.
Oh, so your loved one doesn’t experience these motor issues? I guess it would be difficult for you to understand. Maybe you didn’t realize that many of them do hit themselves in the face and experience other injurious behaviors. Also, they DO throw things uncontrollably at times. My son put a hole in his wall with his heel the other day simply because he had a lot of energy. There are many times he loses control of his body. But if you’re going to laugh about it, I don’t expect you to care enough to learn.
Are you talking about meltdowns, here? Because, usually, when the family of an autistic person talks about throwing things uncontrollably, self-injury and so on, that's an autistic meltdown, which is a neurological event normally caused by sensory overload - nothing to do with motor issues. Neither is it 'losing control of your body'. It's wholly 'intentional' - it's an extreme flight/fight reflex.
I'm very very sorry that you can't deal with your family member having neurological issues that don't make sense to you.
Actually no, I’m not talking about meltdowns. But nice job with the assumptions about my knowledge and life experience. Even assuming I “can’t deal with it.” Wow.
Okay. So what are you talking about? You used a specific phase 'motor issues' at the top of the thread. 'Motor issues' has a specific technical meaning, which is usually to do with the sensory-motor or motor planning systems. I have a child with significant disabilities affecting these areas but, no, you told me that, no, this was not what you meant by 'motor issues'.
Then, you told me that your son had kicked a wall and that other people engaged in self-injurious behaviours. This is common in meltdowns in autism - there are literally thousands of accounts of this on the internet and both my own children have autistic meltdowns. But, no, apparently, it's not that either. Neither is it tic-ing, as happens in Tourette's, as these are sudden brief and violent movements that can't do that level of damage to a wall.
If this isn't the issue, what are the specific 'motor issues' that you're referring to? What are the disabilities that your son experiences? I'm genuinely interested because this is apparently unlike anything I've ever encountered before. I'm going to be open-minded, but - generally - when people on FC threads talk about 'motor issues', they seem to be talking about a class of disabilities seen nowhere except FC users whereby a cognitively-typical adult has their entire body hijacked, such that they outwardly do stuff like appear to have meltdowns, but are able to eloquently explain away the behaviour as 'not them' once provided with a letterboard. As the mother of kids whose disabilities 'are them' and an intrinsic part of how they experience and interact with the world, I find the concept of a facilitator potentially influencing a person to dismiss their own lived neurological experiences in this way deeply offensive.
You said, "Another method is for the facilitator to hold a letter board and issue any number of prompts while the client points with a finger or pencil."
You did not differentiate between the types of prompts, nor did you mention that as the speller progresses in skill and accuracy, the prompts are faded. This is common in any type of coaching, and even in other autism therapies. A nonspeaker's communication is not considered to be self-authored until he/she can point to letters accurately with no one giving prompts that guide the speller to specific letters. It would have been beneficial if you had talked to practitioners about the difference between the aquisition phase and the autonomous phase.
During aquisition, the practitioner may give directional prompts to guide the speller to specific letters to answer questions with one known answer. This is how the practitioner helps the speller develop the neural pathways to accurately and consistently point to the desired letters. It's no different than a golf coach helping a beginning golfer with club choice, grip, and swing.
After a speller becomes accurate and consistent at pointing to desired letters, the practitioner can ask questions without knowing how the speller will respond. At this stage, the only prompts provided are eye prompts like "look at the board, move your eyes" or continuation prompts like "find your next letter, keep going". And beyond that, a practitioner might offer encouragement, like "you've got this, trust yourself".
Well, well...just finished a long email to the SLP dept at my grandson's school and then came across your post. The response I got from the school was in many ways similar to Dr Lutz, but with a willingness to consider a trial of RPM. A simple reading of a story and asking questions (to be answered with RPM) to assess comprehension. The possibility of missing cognitive competence, buried under marked apraxia is to me unconscionable. If there is aptitude here I hope to build on a type of facilitated communication. I have little interest in what is "right or wrong" but what works and what doesn't work.
I am clear-eyed about the criticisms ( I have them book marked) and who amongst us has not been a whizz on the Ouija board. I have also listened to Dr. Barry Prizant dismantle those criticisms. It is my opinion that the weight of evidence is shifting with many, many "lived experience" stories from families and small (more recent) studies now taking a serious look at what is happening here. The following acknowledgement of those studies is from Open Evidence:
An eye-tracking study (Jaswal et al., 2020) of nine nonspeaking autistic letterboard users found that participants visually fixated on target letters approximately half a second before pointing to them, rarely made spelling errors, and demonstrated response-time patterns characteristic of fluent spelling. The authors argued these findings render a cueing account unlikely and that "the blanket dismissal of assisted autistic communication is therefore unwarranted". [8]
A separate eye-tracking case study (Grayson et al., 2012) of an FC user found that the individual looked longer at to-be-typed letters before typing them and looked ahead to subsequent letters, patterns consistent with self-directed authorship. [9]
An accelerometry case report (Faure et al., 2021) measuring the motor contributions of both participant and facilitator found that the participant's index finger acceleration preceded the facilitator's in most instances, and that more distal support (farther from the hand) was associated with greater motor contribution from the participant.
In my opinion, it is not just correct answers we should be measuring here, but issues of self-esteem, greater emotional regulation and a way to educate. That (according to Dr. Prizant) thousands of families are having us all on with their kid's achievements is just no longer believable to me. And one last wee rant...why would we assume that the demographic most likely to be abused (non speaking children) are a greater risk of making false accusations???
After a more thorough reading of your piece here, my attention was drawn to your use of disparaging comments about proponents of various spelled communication methods, saying that they "went bananas" and made "unhinged accusations against her on social media."
That disdain, along with the fact that you gave no indication that you have investigated this issue from all angles, actually engaging with the people who support its use, but instead taking your only cues from those who oppose it, is a detriment to our community and the idea of open dialogue.
"If parents and facilitators are so sure their nonverbal kids and adults are authentically communicating, they should be eager to participate in testing. This is Scientific Method 101, and standard practice with any intervention in autism, not just spelling."
Let's say your 4-year-old knows her ABCs. She sings them at home all the time with no prompting from you. Then a stranger who disbelieves you demands that she go to an unfamiliar location, you are not allowed to be present, the stranger makes it clear that he/she does NOT believe your child really knows her ABCs, and then demands that your child say, not sing, the alphabet. If she is unsuccessful, is that proof that she doesn't know her ABCs, or is it proof that the test itself and the testing conditions are not giving an accurate assessment of her abilities?
To me, this suggests that the child, like many echolalic autistic children, can indeed sing the ABC’s. However, the child may not understand the verbal direction to “say (or sing) the alphabet.“.
It also does not provide any evidence that the child understands the meaning and use of letters of the alphabet.
Also, let's simplify this to "reciting the alphabet" which the child does reliably at home but not with the stranger. This takes away the unnecessary things that YOU dishonestly added to the task — meaning and use of the alphabet.
This was an allegory, not a direct representation. Let me pick any other skill which a child may possess but cannot reliably reproduce in stressful conditions or when measured by an ineffective measurement (like measuring intelligence based on responses that all require motor output from a child who has obvious motor planning difficulties.)
Re: this [New York Times] article [written by Amy Lutz].
Let me begin by saying credibility and credentials are important, as are facts. Amy Lutz is not a clinician, has no clinical credentials, and no research credentials. She is a parent with very cast-in-concrete biases reflected in her repeating the same arguments we have heard for years from naysayers who benefit financially and in so many ways by attempting to silence non-speakers. I am writing as a speech-language pathologist with more than 50 year’s experience, the founder of the first speech language department in a psychiatric hospital in the world at the Brown University Program in Medicine in 1984, as a Fellow and Honors recipient (their highest honor) of the American Speech Language Hearing association, as a participant on a number of NIH committees on autism, and as the author of the best-selling book on autism since 2015. I also was a skeptic at the introduction of facilitated communication to the US in 1990, but my years of clinical experience and subsequent research, unlike the very dated and biased research Lutz relies on, has led me to a different conclusion - assistive communication techniques hold so much promise for a yet to be determined number of non-speaking individuals. To deny this right is to stall clinical science and limit improved quality of life for so many.
I have observed and documented results ranging from dramatic, to noteworthy but smaller improvements in communication over time. We just published a 2026 peer-reviewed article in the prestigious journal, Autism Research, in which we document the need for continued research. But Amy Lutz, in her uninformed and dated opinion, believes her opinion about assistive communication approaches is settled law, case closed, based on her experience with her son with "profound autism" and a misinterpretation of dated, biased research. Her article has so many factual inaccuracies, that it would be difficult to enumerate them all here. But some of the most glaring include the omission of any consideration of the co-occurrence of neuromotor disorders in non-speaking individuals, lumping very different approaches under the 30 year old version of facilitated communication (which has changed significantly), the fact that nobody claims that every non-speaking individual has hidden intellectual brilliance, as cognitive abilities are as variable as is the population of non-speaking individuals. She neglects to mention the many nonspeaking individuals who now type independently and learned to do so through the very approaches she condemns: Hari Srinavasan, a PhD. candidate in Cognitive Neuroscience at Vanderbilt University, and the keynote speaker at the UN this year on Autism Awareness day, Elizabeth Bonker, a valedictorian at Rollins College and a member of an NIH Committee on autism, and Jordyn Zimmerman, with a master’s degree in education and a consultant to numerous disability advocacy organizations and many others. Why doesn't she and the people she cites call out Vanderbilt University, Harvard University, the United Nations, NIH and many other prestigious institutions who recognize the communication of nonspeakers as being authentic?? Afraid of a defamation law suit?? Not only are we dealing with a moral issue that communication choice is a human right, but this misinformation and uniformed opinion expressed in Amy Lutz's article is directly contradicted by contemporary research, lived experience and documented progress with newer approaches to assisted communication. AND, incredibly harmful to families and the mental health and well-being of the very people she says she is defending!
There are many videos freely available of spellers very clearly independently typing (look on the communication4all website, in the "zen moment" section at the end of each instructional video". Nobody holding their hands, and their finger clearly moving rather than the board.
There's no question that in the real world, it's happening, and they are doing it.
Research needs to focus on examining how and why it IS happening, not burying heads in the sand and denying what's clearly in front of us. And this research is already underway.
Denying it serves nobody.
Global apraxia is not the only physical problem at play, but it's the major piece that's been missed up to this point.
The problem is with intentional, conscious, novel movement. And not with the other types of movement: reflex movement, automatic movement (muscle memory), impulsive movement. Hence apraxic people being able to do things like type single works they've done a million times before, ski, recite lines from cartoons, tap specific sequences into AAC, play specific tunes on instruments. The lists go on and on.
Criticism of prompting in these methods only exposes a total lack of understanding. Prompting is essential to learning the method. The goal is to be fully independent, but this is an advanced stage.
I would seriously question the motives of those trying so hard to discredit these methods, obviously without having spent any time observing accomplished and 'open' spellers. These people are typically extremely embedded in the current paradigm and stand to suffer significant impacts to their careers and often financially. They can never be impartial. Their lasting legacy will be having seriously delayed progress and help for millions of non speakers.
If the ability to spell were sufficient to enable authentic communication then my profoundly autistic adult daughter might be a best selling author. She taught herself to type fluently at 4 and to spell via ASL at 6.
But no, she can barely communicate at all. She types all the time. It's just not meaningful. And she's had many years of communication therapy and speech therapy.
My son knew his alphabet at 2yrs, 100% grade level spelling tests writing or typing, can read grade level out loud, he can speak but is unreliable, mostly echolalia ....
and could never show comprehension consistently. And he never wanted to use PECS or AAC or ASL -
For ASL - we now know, because he could not get his body to do complicated finger manipulation
and with PECS and AAC because he would get into loops
ABA helped initially but again, he was being trained to give a SPECIFIC response, NOT HIS response but the expected one. He was repeatedly evaluated at cognitive level if 5-6 yr old.
As he got older he got more and more dysregulated and injurious. At 6'2" and 220 lbs - he was a danger to himself and others
But he showed his intelligence in other ways And we kept believing in him.
He has been a speller now for 3+ yr and has been consistently open with communicating since 8 months in. Since spelling, he now tells us what is going on, gives us advice on how to help, tells us when he is not feeling well, he directs his activities - AND his dysregulation is 5% what it was before and no longer at a dangerous level.
HIS goal is independent typing. But with his whole body apraxia, he may still WANT a communication partner to help him with regulation and initiation.
He is now happy
He now has conversations with friends and family and prior teachers - both speakers and non-speakers.
So tell me again how this is dangerous? Tell me how he is being harmed?
Oh my....thank you for this history Judy. There are so many overlaps with my (10yo) grandson's story. Those of us who know him can see the bright boy inside but the school is getting a lot of frustrated aggressive and dysregulated behaviour. My pitch to get them to just consider trying RPM/S2C was that this may help his dysregulation. He too...is fast and strong...and potentially dangerous. This was definitely a strong selling point.
Like you I am absolutely stymied by the resistance to try. Given all the things our children have been exposed to...THIS is considered harmful and dangerous???
Being able to type and being able to communicate through typing are two different things. A skilled practitioner starts from the beginning using letterboards and coaching the body to make purposeful choices, then gradually moves the client to higher tech like keyboards or iPads.
Some other nonspeakers have also "taught themselves to type" with no effective communication happening, but then have used one of these methods to learn to communicate their true thoughts and ideas. Will you not believe the individuals themselves, even after they have progressed to typing independently with no support?
The essential part is developing completely independent communication skills. Entirely autonomous, without a facilitator. That makes all the difference. As those who have meticulously documented the issues with FC have said, that's the goal. In contrast, there's a problem when the person continues to need a facilitator.
Yes, without a doubt the goal is to develop completely independent communication. The question is how best to achieve this? We have used the recommended SLP services for six years now complete with iPad, Touchchat, PECs charts, trained EA's and a SLP coordinator. At best, a highly prompted tap on a bathroom picture is what has been achieved. I'm thrilled to hear that you have found a communication formula that works for your daughter. If you are happy to share I would love to hear about it. It's not that my grandson does not communicate...he's a pretty independent guy who can look after his needs at home...and believe me if you make a mistaken interpretation of what he wants...you will learn pretty quickly! What has interested me about S2C is the fact that these children are going on to get an education. If, in the long run, he required a communication partner to participate fully in school I would be thrilled. I must confess I'm surprised by the passion of the debate on this topic...I think there is reason to give RPM/S2C a try...I promise....I will be the first to say if it is not successful...and I will move on to something else. You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.....
Doreen, the primary method we used, other than speech therapy and RDI ("behavioral") was called APRICOT. It might not be available now as the leaders retired years ago. And while it was helpful, my daughter still cannot communicate meaningfully.
About those young folks getting a good education with a facilitator: I hope it's truly the autistic person learning and communicating, not the facilitator. It might vary a lot between individuals.
In Jackie's article, in the “What you can do” section, she offers links to only the viewpoints of those opposed to spelled communication methods. Suggesting that her readers form their opinions about an intervention based only on opposing views is detrimental to the very community she claims to be trying to protect.
While Jackie's post is long, I found it worthwhile to read the whole thing.
Her article has a section "The strongest argument from the other side." It starts with:
"If you want to find what the spelling movement actually argues — not the rage emails, not the Facebook posts — read “Top 10 Myths About S2C Debunked” by Jennifer Binder Le Pape on the I-ASC website. It is the most sophisticated, structured, well-cited document the movement has produced." A little further down it says "I am going through this not to be combative but because if you read the I-ASC piece — and you should, because I have named it — you will see that each rebuttal addresses a real objection but does not survive careful examination"
I-ASC means the International Association for Spelling as Communication. It takes some digging to find that info.
I read Jackie's piece, too. I just disagree with her claim that the points in the I-ASC piece don't survive careful examination. Referencing a pro-spelling piece only in the context of a rebuttal is not the same as inviting a careful examination.
Spelling methods are the only methods I’ve seen that effectively address the motor issues, including impulsivity. I typically do not see AAC devices introduced in a way that prevents impulsive selections. This hinders the nonspeaker’s ability to select what they truly want to select. This is why families are seeing success with spelling when they haven’t seen that same progress with years of other methods taught through speech therapy and special education.
People in favour of S2C/RPM talk a lot about 'motor issues'. I've now asked several to describe the motor issues that their family member is experiencing, e.g. what grip do they use for pens? Are they a wheelchair user?
Invariably, they report family members who struggle to use cutlery or dress themselves, and who are somewhere on a continuum between a palmar supinate and a tripod grip, but who are not a wheelchair user. At which point, I know they are sadly deluding themselves. Because I have an exceptionally gifted 6yo with a 3-4 year motor delay and that has NO resemblance to the disabilities that the families of spellers are reporting.
Literally, for 'whole body apraxia' to be wholly responsible for their profound disabilities, that family member would be a frequent, if not constant, wheelchair user because they wouldn't be able to control their body parts well enough to walk. Because *that* is what people with average intelligence and extreme motor disabilities look like - people who can't control their body well enough to sit up straight, who can't run without falling over, and who have quite mumbled speech. Nonetheless, their body movements, although clumsy, are made with intention.
Again, if you had uncontrollable impulsivity in your body movements, you would be constantly punching yourself in the face, dropping and throwing things (as with some people with Tourette's)- it wouldn't only miraculously kick in whenever someone offered you a letterboard.
Oh, so your loved one doesn’t experience these motor issues? I guess it would be difficult for you to understand. Maybe you didn’t realize that many of them do hit themselves in the face and experience other injurious behaviors. Also, they DO throw things uncontrollably at times. My son put a hole in his wall with his heel the other day simply because he had a lot of energy. There are many times he loses control of his body. But if you’re going to laugh about it, I don’t expect you to care enough to learn.
Are you talking about meltdowns, here? Because, usually, when the family of an autistic person talks about throwing things uncontrollably, self-injury and so on, that's an autistic meltdown, which is a neurological event normally caused by sensory overload - nothing to do with motor issues. Neither is it 'losing control of your body'. It's wholly 'intentional' - it's an extreme flight/fight reflex.
I'm very very sorry that you can't deal with your family member having neurological issues that don't make sense to you.
Actually no, I’m not talking about meltdowns. But nice job with the assumptions about my knowledge and life experience. Even assuming I “can’t deal with it.” Wow.
Okay. So what are you talking about? You used a specific phase 'motor issues' at the top of the thread. 'Motor issues' has a specific technical meaning, which is usually to do with the sensory-motor or motor planning systems. I have a child with significant disabilities affecting these areas but, no, you told me that, no, this was not what you meant by 'motor issues'.
Then, you told me that your son had kicked a wall and that other people engaged in self-injurious behaviours. This is common in meltdowns in autism - there are literally thousands of accounts of this on the internet and both my own children have autistic meltdowns. But, no, apparently, it's not that either. Neither is it tic-ing, as happens in Tourette's, as these are sudden brief and violent movements that can't do that level of damage to a wall.
If this isn't the issue, what are the specific 'motor issues' that you're referring to? What are the disabilities that your son experiences? I'm genuinely interested because this is apparently unlike anything I've ever encountered before. I'm going to be open-minded, but - generally - when people on FC threads talk about 'motor issues', they seem to be talking about a class of disabilities seen nowhere except FC users whereby a cognitively-typical adult has their entire body hijacked, such that they outwardly do stuff like appear to have meltdowns, but are able to eloquently explain away the behaviour as 'not them' once provided with a letterboard. As the mother of kids whose disabilities 'are them' and an intrinsic part of how they experience and interact with the world, I find the concept of a facilitator potentially influencing a person to dismiss their own lived neurological experiences in this way deeply offensive.
You said, "Another method is for the facilitator to hold a letter board and issue any number of prompts while the client points with a finger or pencil."
You did not differentiate between the types of prompts, nor did you mention that as the speller progresses in skill and accuracy, the prompts are faded. This is common in any type of coaching, and even in other autism therapies. A nonspeaker's communication is not considered to be self-authored until he/she can point to letters accurately with no one giving prompts that guide the speller to specific letters. It would have been beneficial if you had talked to practitioners about the difference between the aquisition phase and the autonomous phase.
During aquisition, the practitioner may give directional prompts to guide the speller to specific letters to answer questions with one known answer. This is how the practitioner helps the speller develop the neural pathways to accurately and consistently point to the desired letters. It's no different than a golf coach helping a beginning golfer with club choice, grip, and swing.
After a speller becomes accurate and consistent at pointing to desired letters, the practitioner can ask questions without knowing how the speller will respond. At this stage, the only prompts provided are eye prompts like "look at the board, move your eyes" or continuation prompts like "find your next letter, keep going". And beyond that, a practitioner might offer encouragement, like "you've got this, trust yourself".
Well, well...just finished a long email to the SLP dept at my grandson's school and then came across your post. The response I got from the school was in many ways similar to Dr Lutz, but with a willingness to consider a trial of RPM. A simple reading of a story and asking questions (to be answered with RPM) to assess comprehension. The possibility of missing cognitive competence, buried under marked apraxia is to me unconscionable. If there is aptitude here I hope to build on a type of facilitated communication. I have little interest in what is "right or wrong" but what works and what doesn't work.
I am clear-eyed about the criticisms ( I have them book marked) and who amongst us has not been a whizz on the Ouija board. I have also listened to Dr. Barry Prizant dismantle those criticisms. It is my opinion that the weight of evidence is shifting with many, many "lived experience" stories from families and small (more recent) studies now taking a serious look at what is happening here. The following acknowledgement of those studies is from Open Evidence:
An eye-tracking study (Jaswal et al., 2020) of nine nonspeaking autistic letterboard users found that participants visually fixated on target letters approximately half a second before pointing to them, rarely made spelling errors, and demonstrated response-time patterns characteristic of fluent spelling. The authors argued these findings render a cueing account unlikely and that "the blanket dismissal of assisted autistic communication is therefore unwarranted". [8]
A separate eye-tracking case study (Grayson et al., 2012) of an FC user found that the individual looked longer at to-be-typed letters before typing them and looked ahead to subsequent letters, patterns consistent with self-directed authorship. [9]
An accelerometry case report (Faure et al., 2021) measuring the motor contributions of both participant and facilitator found that the participant's index finger acceleration preceded the facilitator's in most instances, and that more distal support (farther from the hand) was associated with greater motor contribution from the participant.
In my opinion, it is not just correct answers we should be measuring here, but issues of self-esteem, greater emotional regulation and a way to educate. That (according to Dr. Prizant) thousands of families are having us all on with their kid's achievements is just no longer believable to me. And one last wee rant...why would we assume that the demographic most likely to be abused (non speaking children) are a greater risk of making false accusations???
After a more thorough reading of your piece here, my attention was drawn to your use of disparaging comments about proponents of various spelled communication methods, saying that they "went bananas" and made "unhinged accusations against her on social media."
That disdain, along with the fact that you gave no indication that you have investigated this issue from all angles, actually engaging with the people who support its use, but instead taking your only cues from those who oppose it, is a detriment to our community and the idea of open dialogue.
You say "it's our moral duty to demand proof of effective methodology and independent authorship."
I would think it's your moral duty to know more about the topic before using your platform to cast doubt and make any "demands".
I hope to comment more later.
Thank you, Arthur. I know you have a valuable perspective about FC.
You can say that again https://decisions.massbbo.org/massbbo/dd/en/item/4802/index.do
"If parents and facilitators are so sure their nonverbal kids and adults are authentically communicating, they should be eager to participate in testing. This is Scientific Method 101, and standard practice with any intervention in autism, not just spelling."
Let's say your 4-year-old knows her ABCs. She sings them at home all the time with no prompting from you. Then a stranger who disbelieves you demands that she go to an unfamiliar location, you are not allowed to be present, the stranger makes it clear that he/she does NOT believe your child really knows her ABCs, and then demands that your child say, not sing, the alphabet. If she is unsuccessful, is that proof that she doesn't know her ABCs, or is it proof that the test itself and the testing conditions are not giving an accurate assessment of her abilities?
To me, this suggests that the child, like many echolalic autistic children, can indeed sing the ABC’s. However, the child may not understand the verbal direction to “say (or sing) the alphabet.“.
It also does not provide any evidence that the child understands the meaning and use of letters of the alphabet.
Also, let's simplify this to "reciting the alphabet" which the child does reliably at home but not with the stranger. This takes away the unnecessary things that YOU dishonestly added to the task — meaning and use of the alphabet.
This was an allegory, not a direct representation. Let me pick any other skill which a child may possess but cannot reliably reproduce in stressful conditions or when measured by an ineffective measurement (like measuring intelligence based on responses that all require motor output from a child who has obvious motor planning difficulties.)
https://growingkidstherapy.com/2018/06/28/open-letter-to-asha-by-elizabeth-vosseller/
I had not read this. Thank you for posting.
Re: this [New York Times] article [written by Amy Lutz].
Let me begin by saying credibility and credentials are important, as are facts. Amy Lutz is not a clinician, has no clinical credentials, and no research credentials. She is a parent with very cast-in-concrete biases reflected in her repeating the same arguments we have heard for years from naysayers who benefit financially and in so many ways by attempting to silence non-speakers. I am writing as a speech-language pathologist with more than 50 year’s experience, the founder of the first speech language department in a psychiatric hospital in the world at the Brown University Program in Medicine in 1984, as a Fellow and Honors recipient (their highest honor) of the American Speech Language Hearing association, as a participant on a number of NIH committees on autism, and as the author of the best-selling book on autism since 2015. I also was a skeptic at the introduction of facilitated communication to the US in 1990, but my years of clinical experience and subsequent research, unlike the very dated and biased research Lutz relies on, has led me to a different conclusion - assistive communication techniques hold so much promise for a yet to be determined number of non-speaking individuals. To deny this right is to stall clinical science and limit improved quality of life for so many.
I have observed and documented results ranging from dramatic, to noteworthy but smaller improvements in communication over time. We just published a 2026 peer-reviewed article in the prestigious journal, Autism Research, in which we document the need for continued research. But Amy Lutz, in her uninformed and dated opinion, believes her opinion about assistive communication approaches is settled law, case closed, based on her experience with her son with "profound autism" and a misinterpretation of dated, biased research. Her article has so many factual inaccuracies, that it would be difficult to enumerate them all here. But some of the most glaring include the omission of any consideration of the co-occurrence of neuromotor disorders in non-speaking individuals, lumping very different approaches under the 30 year old version of facilitated communication (which has changed significantly), the fact that nobody claims that every non-speaking individual has hidden intellectual brilliance, as cognitive abilities are as variable as is the population of non-speaking individuals. She neglects to mention the many nonspeaking individuals who now type independently and learned to do so through the very approaches she condemns: Hari Srinavasan, a PhD. candidate in Cognitive Neuroscience at Vanderbilt University, and the keynote speaker at the UN this year on Autism Awareness day, Elizabeth Bonker, a valedictorian at Rollins College and a member of an NIH Committee on autism, and Jordyn Zimmerman, with a master’s degree in education and a consultant to numerous disability advocacy organizations and many others. Why doesn't she and the people she cites call out Vanderbilt University, Harvard University, the United Nations, NIH and many other prestigious institutions who recognize the communication of nonspeakers as being authentic?? Afraid of a defamation law suit?? Not only are we dealing with a moral issue that communication choice is a human right, but this misinformation and uniformed opinion expressed in Amy Lutz's article is directly contradicted by contemporary research, lived experience and documented progress with newer approaches to assisted communication. AND, incredibly harmful to families and the mental health and well-being of the very people she says she is defending!
Barry M. Prizant, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Adjunct Professor
Department of Communicative Disorders
College of Health Sciences
University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI
A rebuttal with respectable credentials
There are many videos freely available of spellers very clearly independently typing (look on the communication4all website, in the "zen moment" section at the end of each instructional video". Nobody holding their hands, and their finger clearly moving rather than the board.
There's no question that in the real world, it's happening, and they are doing it.
Research needs to focus on examining how and why it IS happening, not burying heads in the sand and denying what's clearly in front of us. And this research is already underway.
Denying it serves nobody.
Global apraxia is not the only physical problem at play, but it's the major piece that's been missed up to this point.
The problem is with intentional, conscious, novel movement. And not with the other types of movement: reflex movement, automatic movement (muscle memory), impulsive movement. Hence apraxic people being able to do things like type single works they've done a million times before, ski, recite lines from cartoons, tap specific sequences into AAC, play specific tunes on instruments. The lists go on and on.
Criticism of prompting in these methods only exposes a total lack of understanding. Prompting is essential to learning the method. The goal is to be fully independent, but this is an advanced stage.
I would seriously question the motives of those trying so hard to discredit these methods, obviously without having spent any time observing accomplished and 'open' spellers. These people are typically extremely embedded in the current paradigm and stand to suffer significant impacts to their careers and often financially. They can never be impartial. Their lasting legacy will be having seriously delayed progress and help for millions of non speakers.
Thank you for sharing all of these excellent points.
https://i-asc.org/top-10-myths-about-s2c-debunked/
If the ability to spell were sufficient to enable authentic communication then my profoundly autistic adult daughter might be a best selling author. She taught herself to type fluently at 4 and to spell via ASL at 6.
But no, she can barely communicate at all. She types all the time. It's just not meaningful. And she's had many years of communication therapy and speech therapy.
My son knew his alphabet at 2yrs, 100% grade level spelling tests writing or typing, can read grade level out loud, he can speak but is unreliable, mostly echolalia ....
and could never show comprehension consistently. And he never wanted to use PECS or AAC or ASL -
For ASL - we now know, because he could not get his body to do complicated finger manipulation
and with PECS and AAC because he would get into loops
ABA helped initially but again, he was being trained to give a SPECIFIC response, NOT HIS response but the expected one. He was repeatedly evaluated at cognitive level if 5-6 yr old.
As he got older he got more and more dysregulated and injurious. At 6'2" and 220 lbs - he was a danger to himself and others
But he showed his intelligence in other ways And we kept believing in him.
He has been a speller now for 3+ yr and has been consistently open with communicating since 8 months in. Since spelling, he now tells us what is going on, gives us advice on how to help, tells us when he is not feeling well, he directs his activities - AND his dysregulation is 5% what it was before and no longer at a dangerous level.
HIS goal is independent typing. But with his whole body apraxia, he may still WANT a communication partner to help him with regulation and initiation.
He is now happy
He now has conversations with friends and family and prior teachers - both speakers and non-speakers.
So tell me again how this is dangerous? Tell me how he is being harmed?
Oh my....thank you for this history Judy. There are so many overlaps with my (10yo) grandson's story. Those of us who know him can see the bright boy inside but the school is getting a lot of frustrated aggressive and dysregulated behaviour. My pitch to get them to just consider trying RPM/S2C was that this may help his dysregulation. He too...is fast and strong...and potentially dangerous. This was definitely a strong selling point.
Like you I am absolutely stymied by the resistance to try. Given all the things our children have been exposed to...THIS is considered harmful and dangerous???
Being able to type and being able to communicate through typing are two different things. A skilled practitioner starts from the beginning using letterboards and coaching the body to make purposeful choices, then gradually moves the client to higher tech like keyboards or iPads.
Some other nonspeakers have also "taught themselves to type" with no effective communication happening, but then have used one of these methods to learn to communicate their true thoughts and ideas. Will you not believe the individuals themselves, even after they have progressed to typing independently with no support?
The essential part is developing completely independent communication skills. Entirely autonomous, without a facilitator. That makes all the difference. As those who have meticulously documented the issues with FC have said, that's the goal. In contrast, there's a problem when the person continues to need a facilitator.
See Jackie Kancir's post The Plastic Letterboard
https://substack.com/home/post/p-196487108
Yes, without a doubt the goal is to develop completely independent communication. The question is how best to achieve this? We have used the recommended SLP services for six years now complete with iPad, Touchchat, PECs charts, trained EA's and a SLP coordinator. At best, a highly prompted tap on a bathroom picture is what has been achieved. I'm thrilled to hear that you have found a communication formula that works for your daughter. If you are happy to share I would love to hear about it. It's not that my grandson does not communicate...he's a pretty independent guy who can look after his needs at home...and believe me if you make a mistaken interpretation of what he wants...you will learn pretty quickly! What has interested me about S2C is the fact that these children are going on to get an education. If, in the long run, he required a communication partner to participate fully in school I would be thrilled. I must confess I'm surprised by the passion of the debate on this topic...I think there is reason to give RPM/S2C a try...I promise....I will be the first to say if it is not successful...and I will move on to something else. You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.....
Doreen, the primary method we used, other than speech therapy and RDI ("behavioral") was called APRICOT. It might not be available now as the leaders retired years ago. And while it was helpful, my daughter still cannot communicate meaningfully.
About those young folks getting a good education with a facilitator: I hope it's truly the autistic person learning and communicating, not the facilitator. It might vary a lot between individuals.
In Jackie's article, in the “What you can do” section, she offers links to only the viewpoints of those opposed to spelled communication methods. Suggesting that her readers form their opinions about an intervention based only on opposing views is detrimental to the very community she claims to be trying to protect.
While Jackie's post is long, I found it worthwhile to read the whole thing.
Her article has a section "The strongest argument from the other side." It starts with:
"If you want to find what the spelling movement actually argues — not the rage emails, not the Facebook posts — read “Top 10 Myths About S2C Debunked” by Jennifer Binder Le Pape on the I-ASC website. It is the most sophisticated, structured, well-cited document the movement has produced." A little further down it says "I am going through this not to be combative but because if you read the I-ASC piece — and you should, because I have named it — you will see that each rebuttal addresses a real objection but does not survive careful examination"
I-ASC means the International Association for Spelling as Communication. It takes some digging to find that info.
The I-ASC article is here:
https://i-asc.org/top-10-myths-about-s2c-debunked/
I read Jackie's piece, too. I just disagree with her claim that the points in the I-ASC piece don't survive careful examination. Referencing a pro-spelling piece only in the context of a rebuttal is not the same as inviting a careful examination.