Behind the Glass with Nick and Soma
Today’s “Behind the Glass” session is with Nick and Soma using a form of Facilitated Communication called Rapid Prompting Method (RPM). As with the first session, the focus of this blog post will be on the facilitator (Soma), since facilitator influence is of the utmost concern when it comes to the use of FC.
Soma holds a letter board in the air, controlling the placement and letter selection.
Soma Mukhapadhyay is the founder of RPM, so we would expect that such a master would not be cuing her students while she holds the letter board in the air, but 25 seconds into the video, we can see the board visibly shift in the air as she holds it in front of her student. More about that in a minute.
The description of this Youtube Video explains that this is Nick’s first conversation ever with another autistic teen and that the volume quality is poor. Viewers are urged to use head phones, but this did not really help. Since Soma appears to be doing all the work anyway (speaking, writing, positioning the letter board in the air), the sound is secondary to the facilitator behaviors exhibited in this video.
As lessons go, this one seems to be relatively dull. Soma works with each student separately. Both seem interested in people or objects off the screen when they are not being facilitated. If this is supposed to be a “conversation,” the lack of engagement between the two students is noticeable and concerning. The teaching does not seem to involve instruction on social or conversational skills. Does either student know they are supposed to be “talking” with each other?
Soma, on the other hand, seems to be in a world by herself, eyes focused on the letter board and on writing down what she thinks has been indicated with a stick poked into an alphabet stencil. She, at least, seems to be getting something out of the lesson.
The poor sound quality makes it easier to focus almost exclusively on Soma’s body language. First, she stands over the students, which is a power differential. She wants them to comply with the pointing activity and this is one way to achieve that. She also controls when the students have access to the letter board and when to hold the stick and start poking at the board. She controls letter selection by moving the board up, down, backwards, forwards, and side-to-side, depending on what’s needed (see the articles on the ideomotor effect to understand why this happens). At times, she steps closer to the student, positioning her body for optimal letter selection. She also pulls the stick out of the letter spaces by grabbing the students’ pointing hand when they get stuck. She does not allow any wait time to see if the students, on their own, might notice any mistakes in spelling. It seems Soma is doing an awful lot of the work in this “conversation.”
Soma pulls the board away and grabs the student’s hand to control the typing activity.
At one point, one of the students (Nick), picks up a letter board on his own and rubs his hands over it. In this one action, he is demonstrating an ability to manipulate the board on his own. But, he does not initiate any meaningful pointing. And, along with the fact that Soma never asks for feedback from the students to know if what was typed was actually what they meant, two questions arise:
1) If he can hold the letter board on his own and point independently (truly independently—without interference from Soma), why is a facilitator required for this activity? The other student, too, seems quite capable of manipulating a pencil or stick without any confounding motor difficulties. It seems both students would benefit from communication techniques and methods that enhance their independence, not reduce it by building dependence on the facilitator.
2) Do either of the students actually understand what is being typed when they poke at the stencil with a stick? They do not appear to be engaged with the writing activity or interested in the other person’s response to what was purportedly typed. It is not certain from the video that either student knows anything more than point to the letter board with a stick when Soma instructs them to.
From this video, we can see that facilitator cuing can be blatant and visible to the naked eye, though this is not always the case. Letter selection can be controlled when:
1) the facilitator moves the board up and down, backwards and forwards, in and out as its held in the air to optimize letter selection.
2) the facilitator dictatorially chooses when to start and stop the letter board session and chooses which letters are “correct” and which are not.
Questions of authorship also arise when:
1) the students being facilitated appear disengaged rather than engaged with the activity.
2) the students being facilitated cover their eyes or look away during the typing session (subtle, compared to other videos, but evident nonetheless).
3) the facilitator fails to ask for independent confirmation of what has been typed (non-speaking individuals can nod or shake their head, give a thumbs up or down, etc. to indicate whether the typed message was what they intended).
4) the facilitator is doing most of the work during the session.
As an aside, one of the students appears to become more and more agitated as the session wears on. I have seen this in other videos with other students as well (including some of the “stars” of FC and RPM who sound vocally distressed and physically try to extricate themselves from the situation). While it may be difficult to determine 100% from videos like this, the question has to be asked: Why are these students so distressed?
It seems to me that at least some of the frustration may come from the facilitators’ propensity to ignore the non-verbal (and sometimes spoken) behaviors of those they are facilitating. Quite often it appears the students are done, no longer wanting to participate in the activity.
I am reminded of a study in which the student was given a choice between using FC and the Picture Exchange System. The person chose the Picture Exchange System.
Recommended Reading:
Simon, E. W., Whitehair, P. M., & Toll, D. M. (1996). A case study: Follow-up assessment of facilitated communication. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 26, 9-18. DOI: 10.1007/BF02276232
The purpose of this study was a follow-up of apparent effectiveness of FC from Simon, Toll and Whitehair (1994) to compare the accuracy of FC to the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS). One facilitator and one individual with moderate developmental delays participated. Test protocols included randomized presentation of stimulus known to the individual with disabilities. Activities involved description of stimulus using a naive facilitator (FC) or naive teacher (using PECS), and subject description of stimulus with cuing. There was a follow-up at 10 weeks. Results indicated that there was no validated FC communication on any of the trials. The individual with disabilities preferred PECS to FC and achieved 100% accuracy using that communication system. PECS is a valid and reliable communication method.