Here's what we know. Assisted methods to teaching typing have been highly controversial in the field of speech-language pathology and simultaneously have been passionately defended by many non-speaking Autistics. In a recent paper, researcher, Vikram Jaswal, along with a team including Dr. Kristie Patten, Dr. Barry Prizant, and several others, argued that we need more research on assisted communication methods so that we can get clearer answers. 

On the podcast today, Dr. Jaswal and I are going to talk about what all of this means, why it has been so controversial, and what steps might help us understand the potential and the limitations of assisted communication methods. This conversation is thoughtful and nuanced, but if you have more specific questions after listening, you can find a link to questions that readers wrote to Dr. Jaswal, as well as his detailed answers linked in our show notes at learnplaythrive.com/podcast. So, if you have thoughts, questions, feedback, please start there first. A little bit about our guest. Dr. Vikram Jaswal is a developmental psychologist, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cognition and Development. Here's the conversation. 

Hi, Vikram. Welcome to the podcast. 

Dr. Vikram: 
Hi, Meg. Thank you for having me. 

Meg:
I am so excited to talk with you, and I wanna jump right into the topic here because you recently authored a paper called 'Why We Need to Study Assisted Methods to Teach Typing to Nonspeaking Autistic People'. You authored this paper alongside Barry Prizant, Morgan Barense, Kristie Patten, and Gary Stobbe. And I wanna start at the beginning of this conversation: What are assisted methods, and why have they been controversial? 

Dr. Vikram: 
Well, assisted methods to teach typing are a group, maybe an umbrella, that that could be used as an umbrella term to refer to a bunch of different methods — homegrown methods or methods that developed in practice rather than research — which involve communicating with the assistance of another person, learning to type independently as the goal.

But during the learning process, which can take years, folks can benefit from the assistance of another person. The assistance in the case of, say, facilitative communication, comes from backward resistance at the wrist, arm or forearm, or sometimes just a light touch on the shoulder and so on, and other kinds of methods that involve pointing to letters on a letterboard.

In those cases, the assistant provides, you know, holds the letterboard vertically in front of a user as they spell their thoughts and ideas, or learn to type independently. I need to emphasize that. I can't emphasize that enough. The goal in all of these methods is that the person who is learning to communicate by typing needs some support as they get to that point, but it can take years.

I think it's also important that I emphasize that the kind of support or assistance that the person, that the assistant provides, yeah, it can come in the form of backward resistance or holding the letterboard vertically and so on, but there's a lot of other stuff that person is doing. They're providing regulatory, emotional, attentional support. So, they might redirect an individual back to the letterboard if they're learning to point to letters, for example. 

They might encourage them to continue if they're getting distracted. They might offer them motor coaching like, "Up, up, up," to try to get them to move their arm. A lot of the folks who are non-speaking Autistic clients of these practitioners have motor challenges that prevent them from being able to intentional — they have difficulty in engaging in intentional movements, and so they may benefit from supports. 

So, those are some of the different methods. And the reasons why they are controversial is because during that learning process, there is concerned that the person who's supporting a user could influence the user to point to or type things that were not genuinely coming from the user themselves. So, influence is really the concern that has been raised. And yeah, so that's a brief response. I know we'll get into the details.

Meg: 
Yeah, no, that's helpful. And it's interesting 'cause what you're describing is so similar to just the process of occupational therapy or speech therapy, right? Where we're identifying the barriers and scaffolding support so the person can access what they're trying to do and then fade out their supports. And I think it merits naming here that when we say it's controversial, correct me if I'm wrong, there's an ASHA white paper against these practices, right?

Dr. Vikram: 
Yeah. So, I should be clear, I'm a developmental psychologist who does basic research. I'm not a speech pathologist. I'm not an occupational therapist. But yeah, that's right. The professional organization, the American Speech Hearing Language Association in 2019 published a couple of position statements since. They really cautioned against using these techniques, and that has had a detrimental effect on people who are using them to try to learn to be able to communicate independently. That's right. 

Meg:
Yeah. And as much as we emphasize autonomy on the podcast, we also emphasize access and listening to lived experience. And I will say, the loudest voices I've heard saying, you know, "Can we reconsider this?" are Autistic folks who have learned using assisted methods. So, I was grateful to see your and your team's paper to push this conversation more into the spotlight of academia, and researchers, and professional organizations 'cause it's a conversation that is happening. I'm curious a little bit before we go deeper into the content about your story. What are your personal and professional experiences that led you and your team to write this paper? And why do you consider this topic to be so important? 

Dr. Vikram: 
Well, I'll just speak for myself. The other folks who are co-authors on this paper, of course, have their own illustrious backgrounds and experiences. But we all share a real privilege of having gotten to know a number of non-speaking Autistic people who communicate in a variety of ways, and some of whom benefited from a lot of support during the learning process, and who now type independently. And as I mentioned, the method by which they learned to type, for many of them, did involve assistance of another person. 

And now that these folks are independently typing with nobody touching them, or the keyboard, or AAC device, a lot of them have explained that the support that they received over the years as they were learning to type independently was instrumental to where they are now. And so, I think, why shouldn't we take advantage of the opportunity to learn from them in terms of what was helpful during their learning process? What impeded it?

If the goal is to try to support non-speaking Autistic people to communicate more effectively — I think that's everyone's goal — then why shouldn't we learn from folks who have really succeeded quite well in that goal? And I wanna be clear also, I don't have any reason to believe that any single method or any group of methods is going to be appropriate for every person under all circumstances. I think maybe there will be some people who would not be able to benefit from typing support. I don't know. That's something we should study. 

But at the least, we could learn a lot from studying people who have gained some level of autonomy and are able to type without anybody touching them or the keyboard in order to understand what their journeys were like. And as we learn from their experiences, then of course we should do experimental research to try to understand whether their testimony matches what we would expect given some of the empirical work that's being done. Of course, in the long term, we should engage in something like a randomized control trial or something like that, of some method that has been carefully thought about scientifically, as well as making use of the lived experience of people.

So, those were some of the issues that we tried to highlight in that piece that you mentioned. And we all, as I said, all of the co-authors, have had that privilege of getting to know non-speaking Autistic people who are at various points in their journeys to communicate and use lots of different ways to communicate. And so, really, the fact that these folks, despite decades of research and tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars of research grants, like, pretty much the communication outcomes for this population of people, the 30% of Autistic people who cannot communicate effectively using speech, the communication outcomes for them are pretty terrible.

And so, I think it's imperative that we continue to explore and develop new ways to support them in communication and lots of other things. And we now have this amazing opportunity to learn from people who have gained access to a method of communication or a way to communicate that has made all kinds of opportunities accessible to them that they wouldn't otherwise have had.

Meg: 
Yeah. Thank you for sharing. Can you tell us a little bit more about the argument you and your team offer in the paper? 

Dr. Vikram: 
Sure. Well, as I mentioned, about 30% of Autistic people cannot communicate effectively using speech. And by that, I mean they can't share their thoughts, or ideas, or goals and so forth in a language-based way using speech effectively. Some of them don't say anything. Some of them may be engaged in echolalia. Some of them may be are unreliable speakers, so sometimes what they say is what they intend, and sometimes it's not. So, this is an umbrella term, this non-speaking Autistic person that I'm thinking about, but they all share in common a sort of inability to rely on speech to be, alone, to be understood.

And for a long time, people have been interested in trying to provide them with alternatives to speech. I think that there is sometimes a conflation of speech and language that somebody who doesn't speak maybe doesn't have language. To be clear, that's not true. Language is the representation of categories and concepts. You can have language without having speech. We know this, of course, from the experience of Deaf people, many of whom don't speak but can communicate effectively using sign. 

And so, some of the options that are offered to non-speaking Autistic people involve, let's say, the exchange of pictures in order to receive items. So, like the most commonly used one, I think, would be PECS, the Picture Exchange Communication System, where somebody might learn to exchange a picture of a cookie in order to receive a cookie. And the goal is that over multiple stages of training, the person might learn to sequence some of these pictures to be able to respond to questions or make comments. Unfortunately, though, the sorry state of affairs is that very few people advance beyond that requesting or sort of transactive phase where they might — instrumental, I guess, where they request things. So, they use it mainly for requesting. 

And I wanna be clear also that I think people should be provided with as many different ways to communicate as possible. And so, I think that PECS can be an effective way for some people to be able to reduce frustration because they're better able to express what they want, for example, but it's still quite limiting, right? It's limiting in that most people don't advance beyond that requesting phase, and it's also limiting because the vocabulary that's available is chosen by somebody else. And it's also limiting because the what little research there is about its efficacy suggests that its long-term efficacy is not at all robust. So, once their supports are no longer available for somebody who has been through extensive training, then it tends not to get used, you know, which is a big problem in AAC generally. 

So, it was in this context that some parents and professionals, of course, are seeking out ways to help their loved one to communicate, or their client to communicate. And so, some of these assisted methods developed in that context. And we've already talked about what some of the challenges are like, for example, that it's quite possible that the assistant, there's no doubt that influence from the assistant can occur. But I think one of the things that get lost and gets lost in this whole conversation is that this is not an overnight thing. 

This is not something that people just sit down one day and start to be able to do, to type. This is a long process. And those who have become able to type independently with nobody touching them or holding the keyboard, they, as I've mentioned, talk about the years of support that they required to get to that point. And so, this paper was really a call to try to conduct research that might inform how we could understand the process by which they learned, and then maybe be able to support people who are not yet at the stage that those folks who are independently communicating can communicate. 

Meg:
Yeah, it makes sense. Your paper said we need to study these methods. That was the argument you were making, which makes a lot of sense, and we're gonna get to the reception of it in a minute. I'm really interested to hear about that. I know even when I've platformed on the podcast non-speaking folks who learned through assisted methods and were fully independent, I've had lash back of, "Oh, you shouldn't platform them because of the way they learned."

Dr. Vikram: 
Mm-hmm. 

Meg: 
And I was like, but they're typing their answers. Like, why would I not give them a voice and give them a platform? So, strong opinions out there. But I do have one more question. How did lived experiences of non-speaking Autistic folks inform this paper that you and the team wrote?

Dr. Vikram: 
Well, I think that the primary way is by hearing from them how important the various kinds of support that they received during the learning process was. And I think for folks who don't have a lot of experience with non-speaking Autistic people who are learning to type, or those who have become able to type without anybody touching them or the keyboard, like, it may just be very difficult to wrap your head around why would this kind of process be helpful? I don't understand. 

And that's exactly the kind of question we're trying to invite people to think about and do research on. But some of the things that we've heard from non-speaking Autistic folks is that, yes, the person who is supporting me during the learning process, they provided a lot of the motoric support. They provided a lot of guidance. They provided a lot of cues. But they also provided a really trusting environment. They were clearly presuming that I was competent, and that had a big effect on my ability to learn. They were clearly recognizing that I can have good days, or good hours, and bad hours and that I'm nonetheless able and capable of learning.

And somebody who hasn't spent a lot of time with folks who are learning these, learning to communicate in these kinds of ways, they may not appreciate that kind of lengthy process, but also scattershot process, in some ways. Autistic people, whether they're speaking or non-speaking, they're dealing with a lot of stuff and including co-occurring conditions, GI issues that may take time away from what would otherwise be time you could spend 'working', in quotation marks, on communication and so on.

So, there's some real benefit in having somebody who is with you, who understands that you are going through a lot, who appreciates that you have been probably denied educational opportunities; you have been underestimated. And so, there's a lot of emotional and physiologic, emotional and regulatory support that person can provide as well. So, those are some of the things in which the lived experience of the non-speaking folks who have learned through those methods or are learning through those methods, I think that's the way in which they're really highlighted, in my view. 

Meg:
Thank you. Yeah. And you also said at the beginning that often folks who — or you alluded to this — that folks who aren't speaking, there's a motor issue. And that motor issue where they're saying, "I'm trying to say these words and my mouth is not doing what I'm telling it to," the coordination to learn to use communication devices can also be really hard, right? And I feel like that's the thing I've heard from Autistic folks other than sensory, that's the most disabling is when there's a motor coordination challenge present as well. 

Dr. Vikram: 
Right. Well, I think that's an excellent point and should definitely be highlighted, the sort of brain-body disconnect that a lot of folks who I know have described. I think, you know, just to — some of the best experiences that I've had with professionals like OTs and speech-language pathologists, people who really take seriously the motor component of the challenges that somebody faces and, you know, even in more traditional speech-language pathology that's focused on speech, right, there are all kinds of methods that have been established to help people produce speech. And they often involve really physical manipulation of the mouth or of the lips. And they — the goal, of course, is always to reduce the amount of support or the amount of scaffolding that somebody needs.

But that kind of central piece that prompting can play in speech therapy, that people are told what to say, when to say it, how to say it; and of course, the goal is to reduce that. And I don't — I haven't quite worked my head around why the resistance or the sort of opposition to assisted methods of teaching people to type encounters such resistance. I haven't quite worked my head around that, given that it seems to be central in lots of other aspects of the profession, speech-language pathology. And in OT, again, I'm not a clinician, but I know that there is a lot of scaffolding and support that's offered, and the goal is to reduce that. But it's just understood that this is the way learning works, and people can benefit from it. And some people may need more of it for a longer period of time, but that doesn't mean that they're any less worthy of whatever it is we're trying to accomplish than somebody who needs less support.

Meg: 
Yeah. And it's worth naming that some of these strategies around speech that prompt a person what to say and when to say it, that's what we're trying to move away from, with giving them full communication autonomy, right, so they can decide what to say and when to say it. So, it's funny that you mention these strategies that really don't lead to that, that control and limit what a person can say, and when they can say it are allowed. But then, a similar logic and reasoning is given to fully banish this practice that might lead to actual, authentic, autonomous communication. I think there has to be some ableism at play here.

That's just my own guess at it from the outside. I haven't deeply studied how the process is played out. And folks who listen to the podcast or have read anything I've written online know that preserving bodily autonomy is that's one of my big soapboxes, right? That just because I, as an OT, write a goal for somebody, that doesn't mean I have the authority to move that person's body for them to get them to do the thing I want to do.

We know that Autistic folks are at higher risk of sexual assault. None of us should be teaching our Autistic clients that folks can override their bodily autonomy because we want them to do something. I'm curious if you can comment real quick on how consent is built or can be built into these processes, or is that outside of what you've looked at?

Dr. Vikram: 
Well, it is outside of what I've looked at. I think that sometimes — I think sometimes there may be a belief that what somebody says should be taken as the intent that they always have. I know from a lot of non-speaking people that I know, and these are people who are unreliable speakers, that that's just not true. Sometimes they can't help but say things, or sometimes they say things because they've been trained to say them. 

I'll give you an example. I know a young man who in high school, he's a non-speaking person. He could say 'Yes', but he couldn't say 'No'. And I don't know why. And so, he was in some segregated classroom in high school, and a substitute teacher happened to be there for a week, and she said, "Oh, so-and-so says 'Yes' but doesn't say 'No'. I can get him to say 'No'." And so, for that week she would say, "So-and-so, can I have your lunch?" And he would say, "Yes", and then she would take his lunch away. I see your — the look on your face is horror.

Meg: 
I hate this. Yeah.

Dr. Vikram: 
That's why. So, that's just an example of one person's experience. So, yeah, I mean, we're getting a little bit away from the question that you raised. But I think speechism is one way to think about it, too. Like, that speech is the thing that conveys what somebody's true intent is, and you can't necessarily believe that. 

Meg:
And the good news is there's ways to get consent from a person when you have an attuned relationship with them. And if you feel that consent being revoked — they're pulling their hand away, they're looking uncomfortable — we can be attuned to that through a process that doesn't involve physical prompting.

Dr. Vikram: 
Well, I think another really terrible example, you know, a study was published. It got some attention in the Autistic community, a study was published, I don't know, four or five years ago involving a feeding clinic. Lots of Autistic kids may have difficulty with feeding. And in the clinic, which was very behaviorally-based, they had a protocol. It was approved by human subjects review board and so on, but the protocol included basically blocking a child from being able to get away from this food. Probably because of the texture, or the smell, or a combination of things caused them a lot of discomfort and distress, but there was a protocol in place to prevent them from being able to exert the kind of autonomy that you were just talking about. 

And I find that abhorrent, obviously. And but all the cues that you were just talking about there with regard to consent and with regard to letting you know what is wanted and what is not wanted were just being ignored. And imagine if you are an Autistic person who, through most of your life and your experiences, you've never had the opportunity to make it clear in a way that other people respected that you didn't want something or that you did want something, right? I mean, so yeah, there are a lot of complicated issues there. Not an area of my expertise for sure, so I appreciate that as a clinician you have thought of ways to ensure consent. 

Meg: 
I love you pointing out the hypocrisy, though, of the things we do allow that are deeply unethical, while others that could potentially be done ethically are completely banned. I think there's just this underlying presumption of incompetence. Like, that there's no way, there's no way this is real. There's no way these folks, even though they're typing independently, that they are as competent as they seem and as they have been presumed to be. It seems like there's this backlash against it. And I'm curious what, the reception of your paper was. How did other researchers, Autistic self-advocates, and others react? 

Dr. Vikram: 
Well, I appreciated something you said at the beginning of the conversation, which was that it seemed to you like what we were emphasizing or proposing was that we really should study these things to try to understand what's happening and learn from the people who have gone through a process that has enabled them then to access things they would otherwise have been unable to access. 

And I think a lot of people read it that way, but there were people who didn't read it that way and thought that we were platforming, to use a word that you mentioned before, platform particular methods, or that we were somehow promoting something that they didn't believe has any merit to be promoted. When in fact, as I mentioned, our goal was to try to encourage research, given what we have seen and what we know, and given the advances in science over the last ten or twenty years in terms of we recognize that a lot of assumptions and stereotypes about Autistic people that were also held by autism scientists are just wrong. 

And so, you know, I think the combination of lived experience, my own and the coauthors' lived experience of interacting with people who communicate in lots of different ways, and then a better understanding of autism led us to a place where we say, look, we know that the research, there's excellent science showing how difficult — something that you mentioned, too — how difficult motor initiation, planning, and execution is for a lot of Autistic people, particularly for non-speaking Autistic people. 

Given advances in science, and of how common co-occurring conditions are in this population with some anxiety and other psychiatric kinds of challenges that could potentially be mitigated by, in some ways, by learning opportunities to communicate more effectively. Like, doesn't it make sense that we would wanna study these things? So, yeah, it's not unexpected. Some people were appreciative probably, and some people less.

Meg: 
Yeah. I think a lot, like you mentioned, a lot of things have had this sort of trajectory as they relate to supports for Autistic people. Was AAC, in general, once seen as completely outside the scope of what was allowed and acceptable, do you know? 

Dr. Vikram: 
I mean, I don't know. I don't know enough about the history to be able to weigh in on that. But certainly, as you know, of course in the Deaf community, signing was certainly not allowed for Deaf people for many, many, many decades. So, yeah, the ableism that you mentioned before too, Meg, I think plays a role, sort of an unwillingness to believe that somebody who moves in unusual ways, maybe has difficulty tying their shoes, maybe needs support to cross the street — like, how could that person write a poem or engage in a conversation about politics? Well, that's really ableist, right.

Meg: 
Yeah, it is. Yeah. 

Dr. Vikram: 
There is no necessary relation between your ability to tie your shoes and your ability to engage in a conversation about politics. 

Meg: 
That's right. Yeah. 

Dr. Vikram: 
We're facing that as well. 

Meg:
I love the flow of information here, though. We understand that part of being neurodiversity-affirming is research that is led by, inspired by, comes out of Autistic experience, the Autistic community, right. That your, this paper comes from, really comes from, listening to the lived experiences of Autistic folks and then saying, "Hey, here's what we're hearing. We should direct some of our research over here. We should study this," right? Like, when we think about really centering authentic thriving for Autistic adults, communication autonomy is a huge piece of it. And if there's this ask for something to be studied, it does feel very aligned to say, "Hey, we should study it."

And also, not radical at all to say, "We should study this." That it isn't a paper that's saying this is an area where there has never been and isn't abuse or, you know, something misleading happening. It's not saying this is an area where there is always this happening. It's just a paper saying, "Hey, this is worth our time, and our money, and our researchers' attention to study."

Dr. Vikram: 
Yeah, I appreciate that. That was our goal, right? To be able to just say some of the readers of that particular journal, it's called Autism Research, may be surprised that here we are writing about this. But we were invited by the editor to submit a commentary on this topic. And it went through peer review. There were one reviewer who thought it's interesting and made some really constructive suggestions, another one who was in the middle, and a third who was really not — didn't have very much constructive to say. 

So, we did our best to revise it in a way that we could continue to make the point about research, that there should be research about this. I mean, I think one of the challenges is that I think a lot of families who are looking for ways to support their non-speaking Autistic loved person, they've tried lots of different things, and they haven't been successful. They haven't provided the access to communication that they want for their individual, for their loved one.

And so, they continue to search out other ways and develop other ways, and sometimes they stumble across these assistive methods to teach typing. And they say, "Well, let's give that a try, too." But they go, many of them go into it fully aware of this controversy. And certainly if they were to bring it up in a school setting, they will hear about, "It's not, you know, we don't do that here," or they might bring it up with their SLP who's focused on speech, "Oh, we don't do that here." And nonetheless, they will go out to seek a way to provide the same kind, that kind of opportunity. And my goodness, shouldn't we do some research so that they are given the best possible information about these kinds of teaching methods? Yeah.

Meg: 
Yeah, that’s protective. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Are there any plans or next steps for folks moving forward with research? 

Dr. Vikram: 
Well, there are lots of people who are interested in trying to better understand aspects of non-speaking Autistic people's experiences, which may feed into some advances when it comes to assisted methods to teach typing. I mean, one of the things that we know from parent report, of course, is that somebody's ability, a non-speaking Autistic person's ability to understand tends to be much better than their ability to express themselves. And so, how can we better bridge that gap between comprehension and production? How can we better provide people with the tools that would make it possible for them to be more efficient, or effectively produce some kind of communication that could be a language-based way to express themselves? 

So, I think there's interesting research about comprehension. I think there's also really interesting work about motor differences. I don't do that kind of work myself, but really interesting and important research about motor differences. I think sensory differences also. So, I think there's a lot that can contribute to understanding why some of these methods may be effective for some people. Again, just to be clear, I don't know of any method of anything that's effective for everybody all the time. So, I'm not suggesting this is the silver bullet for non-speaking Autistic people who can't yet communicate effectively. 

Meg: 
Yeah. Yeah. You've been studying Autistic communication for some time in your career, and this could be a whole day conversation, what I'm about to ask you here at the very end. But just briefly, can you talk about the tie-ins with some of your other research and what you've found? 

Dr. Vikram: 
Yeah, sure. Well, you know, I was trained as a developmental psychologist, and I spent the first half of my — well, I don't know, I'm showing my age. I spent a long time focused on typically developing kids, questions about language and cognitive development in particular. And one of the things that I really loved about that field and continue to love about research in language and cognitive development focused on typically developing kids is how creative the scientists have to be in order to really tap into or understand what these little kids are thinking and might know, right?

You can't give them a paper and pencil test. You can't just say, "Do objects continue to exist when they go out of view?" You have to design these clever studies in order to examine their actual underlying competence, and that's because we realize that for kids who aren't yet talking, for example, even those who are young and talking, there are performance limitations that can prevent them from being able to demonstrate what they know.

And so, when I started transitioning my research program to focus on questions in autism and communication and social interaction, it just became — it sort of stood out to me like, boy, this is strange. It's like what is what you get. There's not really much, at the time, there wasn't really much obvious attempt to explore what might be going on beneath the surface beyond behavior. And so, yeah, some of the things that we've done in the lab have been trying to apply the tools of cognitive science to questions in non-speaking autism to investigate questions that require some ingenuity to reveal what somebody knows. 

And so, one example is we published a study not long ago about literacy in non-speaking Autistic people, asking a basic question essentially, like, can these individuals, most of whom have never been given the formal opportunities to learn literacy that others take for granted, can they convert the sounds of language into their written form? And with typically developing kids or adults, you could just say, "Spell the word 'Apple'," and give them a piece of paper. But that's not gonna work, obviously, with this population. 

So, we designed a task that's kinda like the Whac-A-Mole task that used to be in the arcades in the '80s and '90s. And the task was really just, like, "Touch whatever you see pulsing on a touch iPad as quickly as you can." And sometimes the iPad displayed the letters of the alphabet in a fixed order, A through Z. And the experimenter would say, "The letters on this trial are going to flash in an order that spells, 'I should water the backyard today.'" Now, somebody who's literate and hears and understands that sentence could predict what the next letter to start flashing would be, right? So, they might be faster to move to the S, given the I, 'I should', because they know what the next letter is gonna be.

Somebody who's not literate or, you know, I mean, you don't have to do anything in this test, just to be clear. You just touch whatever pulsing as fast as you can. It's kinda like one of those games, mindless games you play in the line at the grocery store on your phone. Well, what we — anyway, we were able to compare performance, how fast people responded in that condition with a condition that was closely matched, where it's just nonsense symbols pulsing or even random letters pulsing.

And we found that participants were faster to tap the flashing letters in that first condition that I described when it was spelling out an actual sentence that they'd heard in advance than some of the other control conditions. So, that's just an example of how we're trying to investigate questions with this population that may have some really serious performance limitations that prevent us from understanding what they know.

And why this is important is, well, presuming competence is great. I think there's also benefit in being able to demonstrate competence under some circumstances. It might then change the way that you provide opportunities to people. I mean, sometimes, I'm just surprised sometimes that as a developmental psychologist, again, that it's not really recognized that people without opportunity to learn, without being given opportunities to experience print and literacy opportunities and math opportunities and history opportunities, like, how would you ever learn those things if you weren't provided that instruction?

So, anyway, I think the learning aspect of autism sometimes also gets lost. It's assumed that Autistic people are this way, and they're always this way, and they're not capable of, like, at least some Autistic people aren't capable of learning and so on. And that's ridiculous. We have so many examples where that's not, where that's been shown to be wrong, and we have good research now to show that's wrong, too. 

Meg:
I love that story. I love how you brought your lens in and said, "Wait a second. Like, we know better than this. What are we doing here?" Is there anything before we wrap up from the conversation that you wanna add or bring us back to?

Dr. Vikram:
I don't think so. I mean, Meg, I really appreciate the opportunity to chat. And I think, you know, the main message I hope is conveyed is we need to be providing, as many different ways for this population, non-speaking Autistic people, to learn to communicate as possible. And we need to recognize that just because something doesn't work, whether that's PECS, or some other AAC, or typing doesn't 'work', in quotation marks, at a given point in time, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep trying to give people these opportunities.

And development is not linear. There are ups and downs. And something that is effective at one point in time may not be effective later. And so, then we're gonna want to have other ways to support that person. So, I hope that that is a lasting message from our conversation, that we should be providing folks with as many different ways to communicate as possible, and we should be studying and doing research on ways that some people have found to be effective so that it might be possible to take some of the lessons learned from those cases and apply them to others.

Meg: 
Thank you, Vikram. That is such an important message, and I think we can't hear that enough. Where can we find you and your work online? 

Dr. Vikram:
My lab's website is JaswalLab. That's all one word. J-A-S-W-A-L-L-A-B, dot org. And that's where you can find information about the lab, and the research we're doing, and how to get involved if you're interested. And also publications, many of which are open access, including the autism research piece. So, folks can — maybe you'll put it in the show notes, too. I don't know exactly how this works, Meg. 

Meg:
I will. 

Dr. Vikram: 
But that one, anybody can access for free. There's no paywall involved. 

Meg:
I love that. Okay. Yeah. We'll put everything in the show notes at learnplaythrive.com/podcast, and I can't wait to see what you do next as well. Thank you so much, Vikram.

Dr. Vikram: 
Thank you. 

[Ending note]
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