Myths about myths, validity, and natural message-passing tests, Part I

(Cross-posted at FacilitatedCommunication.org).

Curiously, moments after my latest piece in Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention came out (more on that later), a January blog post on the official Spelling to Communicate (S2C) website crossed my radar. This piece, by S2C promoter and parent Jennifer Binder-Le Pape, professes to give readers valid, evidence-based arguments against what she calls the “top 10 myths” perpetrated by critics of Spelling to Communicate and other variants of facilitated communication (FC).

What Binder-Le Pape actually puts forth, however, are a combination of argument from authority, straw man arguments, circular reasoning, and unsupported and misleading statements.

Among the authorities she cites is herself. In her professional capacity as a strategy consultant, she says, is it her job “to dive into facts and data when confronted with conflicting opinions.” So that’s what she did, she says, with S2C. And in “examining the evidence,” she has learned that “unfavorable views” of S2C are due to “outdated assumptions about autistic individuals.” She does not cite any facts that support this claim.

She also tells us that her son has “shown” numerous professionals that S2C is effective. She does not describe the nature of this demonstration. Instead, she cites the “increasing number of conferences, nonprofits, universities, and media outlets” that now embrace S2C.

She contrasts these authorities with a “small but vocal group of people who seem determined to shut down these efforts at inclusion by insisting that these forms of communication are somehow illegitimate.” This group, she says, holds “opinions” that they present as “the scientific consensus”—which she claims is “incorrect at best and arguably intellectually dishonest.”

The most relevant scientists among whom to solicit a consensus, of course, are those who study language and communication skills in autism, and those who study assisted communication and the potential for cuing and message control by facilitators. Is there a lack of consensus among the scientists who specialize in these areas, and who know about S2C, about the validity of S2C? I wouldn’t be so sure. Many of them keep quiet—perhaps because they know what happens if they speak up.

Critics of S2C and other variants of FC are routinely accused by proponents of FC of espousing hate and causing harm to individuals with disabilities.  Binder-Le Pape is no exception. She cites claims by S2C users that members of the “small but vocal” group of critics have mocked them and hurt their feelings. These claims, of course, are generated by S2C and therefore are only valid if S2C is valid.

But Binder-Le Pape doesn’t go there; instead, she offers consolation to those who have purportedly been harmed by citing the words of civil rights activist James Baldwin. She also cites the Americans with Disabilities Act.

And then she turns to the ten purported myths.

The first is that no research supports S2C. Binder-Le Pape counters this “myth” by claiming the existence of a “growing body” of S2C-supporting research. The only examples she cites—all of them familiar to us at FacilitatedCommunication.org—date back to 2020 and earlier.

First, she cites Elizabeth Torres, an outspoken believer in all forms of facilitated communication who believes that her research supports a reanalysis of autism as a “micro-movement disorder.” Instead of citing Torres’ research directly, however, Binder-Le Pape cites a 2019 interview with the pro-FC organization “Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism.” Torres’ most recent empirical article about micro-movements in autism, however, dates back to 2013, and we critiqued it here two weeks ago. As I discussed, nothing in that article explains the need for the held-up letterboards and hovering prompters that characterize S2C; in fact, in several ways, Torres’ article undermines the case for S2C.

Next, Binder-Le Pape cites Alexis Woolgar’s work on “hidden ability in autism”, which she describes as “us[ing] portable EEGs to measure specific types of brain activity to establish nonspeaking individuals’ complete comprehension of spoken language.” If you follow the link she provides, you discover that this is not a study at all, but rather a research goal:

We would like to learn more about how their brains process spoken words, using brain imaging technologies that are gentle and fast to set up. The aim of our research is to provide a chance for autistic people to demonstrate how well they understand word meanings.

Binder-Le Pape also cites Phase 1 of an actual study by Woolgar’s lab, but, as you can quickly tell from the abstract, the participants were 20 neurotypical children; no study participants were autistic. None of Woolgar’s actual research, in other words, amounts to any evidence of “complete comprehension of spoken language” by nonspeaking individuals, let alone evidence for the validity of S2C.

The one study cited by Binder-Le Pape that actually does purport to find evidence for S2C is Vikram Jaswal’s infamous eye-tracking study. But this article has been critiqued multiple times for flawed assumptions and flawed methodology, for example here and here. To date, no S2C proponent has publicly critiqued these critiques; at least in public, proponents behave as if these critiques don’t exist.

Finally, Binder-Le Pape refers readers to the articles listed on the pro-FC United for Communication Choice (UCC) website. Many of these are not relevant to FC; most are only indirectly relevant. All of the latter have been critiqued on this website, mostly on this page.  It’s notable that the most recent study in the UCC database dates to 2022.

So much for the evidence that supports S2C. Nor do Binder-Le Pape’s citations show that long-standing assumptions regarding autism are “outdated.” Some dozen decades after Leo Kanner coined the term, autism is still clinically defined as involving low levels of social engagement and high levels of restrictive/repetitive behaviors. And a growing body of clinical data, including a very recent eye-tracking study, shows that the low levels of social engagement begin in early infancy. This diminished social engagement tracks with autism severity and derails the acquisition of language, such that the sophisticated vocabulary and sentence structures of messages generated through FC are extremely unlikely to have been generated by those who are most commonly subjected to FC.

Binder-Le Pape concludes her discussion of the first “myth,” the purported myth that no research supports S2C, by citing the words of S2C families and S2C users, thus returning to the circular arguments with which she opened her blog post. We know their communications are authentic because they say they are; we know that S2C works because they say it works.

Michel Bakni, Wikimedia Commons

Binder-Le Pape’s second myth is that “individuals who spell and type to communicate have nothing original to say, and they parrot the beliefs of their communication partners.” This misstates what critics have actually said, which is that all the available evidence suggests that the communication partners are controlling the messages. This likely message control, in turn, makes it impossible to know what the individuals subjected to S2C have to say, as their words are likely being hijacked by others.

Binder-Le Pape doesn’t seem to realize that there’s a distinction between an FCed person parroting a facilitator’s beliefs and a facilitator controlling the facilitated messages. In the case of parroting, the output reflects the facilitator’s beliefs; in the case of control, the output reflects what the facilitator ascribes (however subconsciously) to the facilitated person. Binder-Le Pape brings up cases of FC-generated opinions that differ from the opinions of facilitators, and FC-generated reports of synesthesia that facilitators themselves don’t experience, and assumes that these differences are evidence that the FC-generated messages can’t be authored by the facilitators. It doesn’t seem to occur to her that one can author a message that reflects beliefs that one ascribes to someone else—which is what all the available evidence suggests is precisely what facilitators are (however subconsciously) doing.

Instead, what we get is more circular reasoning: FC-generated messages are evidence that these FCed individuals have something original to say and that they have difficulty controlling their bodies—and that, therefore, FC is valid. FC is valid because FC is valid.

Myth 3, per Binder-Le Pape, is that “S2C hasn’t proved useful in academic settings.” Her evidence for this is more circular reasoning: through S2C-generated output, S2C-ed individuals are completing high school, attending college, graduating college, and putting “the skills they honed in college to good work.” But S2C has allowed them to do this only if the S2C-generated output is theirs, and not that of their facilitators. Again, S2C is valid because S2C is valid.

Besides the circular reasoning, there’s the argument from authority. Binder-Le Pape cites Harvard, Berkeley, UCLA, Tulane, Oberlin, and Rollins as institutions that have enrolled and graduated individuals she characterizes as “non-speaking autistics who type and spell to communicate”. She also cites Time, Newsweek, Fortune, and Psychology Today as having published the typed output of one of these individuals. S2C is valid, in other words, because all these prestigious institutions behave as if it’s valid.

Myth 4: per Binder-Le Pape, is that “using a CRP [‘communication and regulations partner,’ or facilitator] prevents individuals from developing independent typing skills.” She concedes, without explaining why, that “achieving independence requires thousands of hours of practice.” Nor does she supply any evidence that any S2C-ed individual ever attains independence. True communicative independence, as we have repeatedly explained, includes the ability to type spontaneous messages that match earlier, FCed levels of sophistication without any of one’s facilitators/CRPs within auditory or visual cueing range.  

Instead, Binder-Le Pape proceeds to cite the S2C-generated words of those subjected to S2C, some of whom “say they prefer communicating on a laminated board, as it is faster and more comfortable for them.”  The circularity continues: once again, S2C-generated messages are cited as evidence that S2C-generated messages are valid.

Myth 5 is that “a message-passing test under controlled conditions is the only way to establish an individual’s independent communication.” No, she insists, a message-passing test is only one way; “direct observation” and eye-tracking are alternatives. We’ve already noted problems with Jaswal’s eye-tracking study and seen how other eye-tracking data (the data about diminished attention to social stimuli) has been unfavorable to FC. As for direct observation, it is susceptible to a well-known psychological fallacy known as naïve realism. As anyone who has attended magic shows knows, at least in the context of magic shows, you can’t always believe what you see.

Finally, Binder-Le Pape discusses natural message-passing tests—and this takes me back, as promised, to my just-published article, entitled Can message-passing anecdotes tell us anything about the validity of RPM and S2C? Here I show why naturalistic message-passing tests, including those cited by Binder-Le Pape and others, cannot be used as evidence in support of FC.

We’re half-way through the myths, and this post has gone on long enough, so we’ll pick up next time at Myth 6.

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REFERENCES

Beals, K. (2021). A recent eye-tracking study fails to reveal agency in assisted autistic communication. Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, 15(1), 46–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 17489539.2021.1918890

Beals, K.P. (2024) Can message-passing anecdotes tell us anything about the validity of RPM and S2C?, Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, DOI: 10.1080/17489539.2023.2290298

Jaswal, V. K., Wayne, A., & Golino, H. (2020). Eyetracking reveals agency in assisted autistic communication. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 7882. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64553-9

Petit, S., Badcock, N. A., Grootswagers, T., & Woolgar, A. (2020). Unconstrained multivariate EEG decoding can help detect lexical-semantic processing in individual children. Scientific reports, 10(1), 10849. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-67407-6