Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that this was most likely written by his facilitator, not by him. It was written via a technique called "Rapid Prompting Method", which appears to be a variant of facilitated communication, a method that has been debunked as simply being the facilitator guiding the child, either consciously or subconsciously, to type things that the facilitator is thinking, not that the child is thinking. See https://en.wikipedi…
Thank you for the explanation. I didn't know about FC. This should have been made very clear at the beginning of the article.
I Have Nonverbal Autism. Here’s What I Want You to Know
11–20 of 53 posts
Re: I Have Nonverbal Autism. Here’s What I Want You to Know
#12That kid is a really good writer for a 12 year old. Very clear and to the point.
Note that this was most likely written by his facilitator, not by him. It was written via a technique called "Rapid Prompting Method", which appears to be a variant of facilitated communication, a method that has been debunked as simply being the facilitator guiding the child, either consciously or subconsciously, to type things that the facilitator is thinking, not that the child is thinking. See https://en.wikipedi…
Re: I Have Nonverbal Autism. Here’s What I Want You to Know
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that this was most likely written by his facilitator, not by him. It was written via a technique called "Rapid Prompting Method", which appears to be a variant of facilitated communication, a method that has been debunked as simply being the facilitator guiding the child, either consciously or subconsciously, to type things that the facilitator is thinking, not that the child is thinking. See https://en.wikipedi…
I didn't realise this kind of thing applied to people with enough motion control to hold a cup of coffee as seen in the photo. Surely they can type on an iPad themselves at that point, without the need for an interpreter or go-between?
Re: I Have Nonverbal Autism. Here’s What I Want You to Know
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that this was most likely written by his facilitator, not by him. It was written via a technique called "Rapid Prompting Method", which appears to be a variant of facilitated communication, a method that has been debunked as simply being the facilitator guiding the child, either consciously or subconsciously, to type things that the facilitator is thinking, not that the child is thinking. See https://en.wikipedi…
I didn't realise this kind of thing applied to people with enough motion control to hold a cup of coffee as seen in the photo. Surely they can type on an iPad themselves at that point, without the need for an interpreter or go-between?
Re: I Have Nonverbal Autism. Here’s What I Want You to Know
#15Without video of the typing it is difficult to believe these assisted communication methods. It seems harsh but in the long run it isn't doing the child any good. This RPM thing involves a lot of fees, and if it isn't the real deal then it's horribly exploitative. Recent paper: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17489539.2014.955...
Please elaborate! :-)
Edit: This seems adequately explained by another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9563887
Re: I Have Nonverbal Autism. Here’s What I Want You to Know
#16We need to be very careful with this. And I mean we, the hacker community, we, society at large, and we, people who genuinely want to reach those with communication disadvantages. I'll start with why: this may not be Philip writing to us. I would like to believe it is, and those of us who may be on the autistic spectrum will not find it difficult to believe that this writing is of the ability they had when they were…
Re: I Have Nonverbal Autism. Here’s What I Want You to Know
#17Re: I Have Nonverbal Autism. Here’s What I Want You to Know
#18That kid is a really good writer for a 12 year old. Very clear and to the point.
If you took a neurotypical kid and duct-taped their mouth shut up to age 12, you would be robbing them of the vast majority of reinforcement learning on grammar and wording that we receive as children, and it would knock them down several standard deviations in skill level relative to their peers in constructing sentences, paragraphs, and essays.
On top of all this is the blatant wish-fulfillment. Socialized kids, at least, have a some degree of ego, and don't often express sincere thanks for their parents, their disorders, that their "school values them", or describe their behavior as "Then I would have meltdowns.". These are forced reflections that just don't occur naturally.
On top of all this is the core of autism: Deficits in the theory of mind. Normal kids start to master deception, pretending, prediction of behavior, and empathizing somewhere between 2 and 5, and get gradually better at it as they get older. Autistics have marked problems in these areas. What they don't do is clearly model their audience, model their audience's ignorance of their own mind, then tell their audience to walk a mile in their own shoes, and describe the novel aspects of their mind from the perspective of a neurotypical outsider. There are recursive layers of social intrigue in this paragraph that people with autism would have a great deal of trouble understanding, much less writing:
"Let’s pretend you are like me. You can’t talk, but you have a well-functioning mind and can understand people. Imagine you answer everyone who says something to you, but only you can hear it. Others hear your voice saying things you don’t necessarily mean. They think that’s all you are capable of thinking. People see your repetitive flapping or tapping and they think it serves no purpose. They don’t understand that the minute you stop, the moment is flooded with lights that hum, loud sounds that echo, kids moving too fast for you to keep up with and people trying to engage with you. It is hard on me to put my stimming away, but I try."
Re: I Have Nonverbal Autism. Here’s What I Want You to Know
#19That kid is a really good writer for a 12 year old. Very clear and to the point.
This is likely above the 95th percentile writing skills for neurotypical twelve-year-olds, and uses anachronistic language to boot. When's the last time you heard a twelve-year-olds using words like "I am weary", or" for causing so much hardship.", or idiomatic abstracts like "another way of being". If you took a neurotypical kid and duct-taped their mouth shut up to age 12, you would be robbing them of the vast majo…
"I love to flap my hands. I flap to feel my body in space. No one goes through the trouble I have to feel my body well. Dare to feel each moment floating weightless in space. I am light and my movement is erratic without gravity making my movement steady. Each day I go crazy not knowing how my body will act. Most people have portly muscle mass to feel their own weight. I do not. I often feel like a bird about to take flight and it makes me flap. I love the sensation of my hands flapping. My hands flap when I am happy. They flap when I am momentarily stressed. They also flap to music. Flapping is important to me. I flap like a bird to feel free from my body. My body is naughty. It acts on impulse too much. No one can discipline it. It has a mind of its own. It makes messes. It acts like a jerk. My body feels tension from stress. Many times I can't feel my body. I am unable to do many things people do without thinking. Lastly, my weary lament for my Autistic friends who can’t communicate kills my soul. Living with autism is hard. I sometimes would like to try living without it but I can't. Living peacefully requires me to accept myself, autism included. I mean to make the most of what I have been given. I have been given a strong mind. I have a mission from God. I am trying to educate the world about autism. No meaning comes from being negative about autism. My slavery to negative stereotypes is over. I am free peacefully pursuing my dreams. Moments are still very challenging but I know I can persevere and someday peacefully make a beautiful life for myself."
"My weary lament"
"I have a mission from God. I am trying to educate the world about autism."
"My slavery to negative stereotypes is over."
I have trouble understanding how anyone could convince themselves this was legitimately a child communicating. It reads a bit like someone trying to make poetic reflections from the point of view of their dog, imagining what it must be thinking and inserting their own florid prose for laughs. If this woman really believes she's speaking with her son, rather than speaking for her son, that's heartbreaking. It reads more like a cruel satire of people who've found themselves in this situation, but to what end I could not guess.
I would have been happy enough having my sister be able to explain that she was screaming because she heard an irritating noise, or tell us what she was getting out of tearing her clothes off, or say she was feeling sad the cat died, or ask us for basic things like not to have to go to the dentist. If we found a way to communicate with her using a vocabulary of ~500 words with simple grammar rather than 5-50 nouns based on immediate wants("cookie", "bathroom", "cheese", "tickle"), all of our lives would have been improved immeasurably... but I wouldn't expect her to start spouting Shakespeare references or Bible verse, and seeing that would cast immediate doubt on whatever method was being used.
Re: I Have Nonverbal Autism. Here’s What I Want You to Know
#20I thought that one of the few genuine insights made about autism is that so-called autistic people have difficultly reading intentions (their own, or other people's) or even appreciating what minds and intentions are. Which is why they appear selfish, and why they're unqualified to make such statements.
Also sceptical that coercing people to behave in socially acceptable ways is necessary or desirable.
People who are basically happy and left to develop autonomously will tend to converge with social expectations as required. Maybe the spontaneous cures of autism are examples of that: happy children, perhaps shielded from bullying, whose parents supported them enough for this lengthy process to occur.
Whereas trying to train people like dolphins risks making them miserable and thwarting that development.