Is S2C Really a (Christmas) Miracle?
December is a great time for newspapers to publish Facilitated Communication (FC) miracle stories. Credulous reporters and click-bait-conscious editors, I suppose, want to give their readers some hope for the upcoming new year.
On December 24, 2022, with her New York Post article called “How a miracle tool enables severely autistic kids to communicate for the first time,” Lenore Skenazy joined a long line of credulous reporters who, starting in 1991, perpetuate the myth that FC is an independent form of communication that enables individuals with profound communication and intellectual difficulties to overcome major language and literacy deficits by pointing to a plastic letter board.
In her article, Skenazy focuses on what she erroneously claims are “new” and “miraculous” techniques called Spelling to Communicate (S2C) and Rapid Prompting Method (RPM). Had she done a quick Google search, Skenazy might have found an article I wrote about this topic in 2021 for The Skeptic, or discovered a certain website with a boatload of resources available to the intellectually curious and a tag line: Facilitated Communication: A thoroughly discredited but persistent technique. (See facilitatedcommunication.org)
I see from Skenazy’s article that proponents are now claiming their students learned literacy skills prior to using S2C and RPM but were unable to access them. Apparently, touching a plastic letter board, somehow magically enables them to unlock language comprehensions skills. In addition, they have somehow mastered the abstract code of written language. It is quite unbelievable if you think about it for more than a minute.
Like reporters in the past, Skenazy (mistakenly) attributes the “success” of FC/S2C/RPM to the low- and high- tech equipment facilitators use with their clients. In the early 1990s, laminated letter boards, typewriters, and the Canon Communicator were the tools of the trade. With S2C and RPM, the trick lies, apparently, with the plastic letter stencils Skenazy raves about.
But, as Crestwood Co. and Abovo Co. found out when they were sued by the Federal Trade Commission years ago, it is false advertising to claim a mechanical device can unlock hidden language and literacy skills. As Boodman (1995) reported:
The technique also has been the subject of a year-long investigation by the Federal Trade Commission. Last month two companies that sell FC devices, Crestwood Co. of Glendale, Wisc., which makes the popular Canon Communicator, a hand-held keyboard with a paper-tape output, and the Abovo Co. of Chicopee, Mass., agreed to settle charges that they made "false and unsubstantiated claims" about the devices. In advertisements the companies had claimed that the machines enable autistics and other disabled people to communicate using FC.
I understand why Skenazy might be confused. With traditional touch-based FC, it is often visibly evident that a facilitator is holding on to the client’s wrist, arm, shoulder, shirt sleeve or other body part during the typing session and, therefore, controlling letter selection. (See Controlled Studies)
With S2C and RPM, clients appear to be pointing independently (or at least extending a finger or stick toward the letter stencil) while the facilitator provides physical, auditory, and visual cues that often go unnoticed by observers. Despite claims to the contrary, facilitators can—and do—cue their clients and control the typing sessions even when there is no direct touch. (FMI about facilitator cuing, see An FC Primer)
Skenazy asserts in her article that S2C “absolutely does need more scientific testing.”
I find this quite an empty statement.
Proponents have been saying this for 30+ years. I think it is safe to say that no current day practicing facilitator intends to participate in reliably controlled tests.
Neither Soma Mukhopadhyay (RPM inventor) nor her disciple Elizabeth Vosseller (S2C Inventor) support testing in ways that would definitively rule in or rule out facilitator control. I suspect this may be due, in no large part, to the fact that Mukhopadhyay failed two double blind tests when facilitating with her son, as documented in Portia Iversen’s book Strange Son. (See review here).
Proponents do, however, fully intend on practicing FC/S2C/RPM as if it has not been disproven.
Skenazy’s article is not news. It is an advertisement for S2C. And, while I understand how Skenazy fell for the psychologically compelling illusion, I am disappointed at her credulity.
Curiously, Skenazy, a reporter, seems to want readers to think she is more adept at detecting facilitator cuing than expert speech/language pathologists, psychologists, and autism specialists associated with organizations such as the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) or the American Association on Intellectual and Development Disabilities (AAIDD) who have conducted their own systematic reviews into the research and added RPM/S2C to their FC opposition statements in 2018 and 2019, respectively. I wonder about her credentials. Is she an expert in autism, language development, literacy, or research design?
The problem for believers and credulous reporters is that the weight of the evidence is against FC/S2C/RPM being an independent form of communication. Skenazy mentions Vikram Jaswal’s study as possibly the single robust study on S2C but fails to mention the major flaws in its design; one being that researchers failed to rule out (or rule in) facilitator control. (Beals, 2020; Beals 2021; London, 2021; Vyse 2020) She also fails to mention that, to date, there is no reliable evidence to disprove that facilitator-reliant techniques like FC/S2C/RPM are anything but facilitator controlled. (See Systematic Reviews)
Critics and skeptics alike have been waiting for proof of efficacy from FC/S2C/RPM proponents since researchers debunked FC in Denmark in the 1970s. (Von Tetzchner, 1997) But let’s take Skenazy’s assertion on faith that current-day proponents will provide scientifically rigorous evidence that FC/S2C/RPM is an independent form of communication (hopefully sooner rather than later).
Now, that would be a miracle.
References
Beals, Katharine (2021, May 12). A Recent Eye-Tracking Study Fails to Reveal Agency in Assisted Autistic Communication. Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, DOI: 10.1080/17489539.2021.1918890
Beals, Katharine. (2020, December 11). What Scientific Reports Won’t Publish. My Critique of Jawal’s FC/S2C Eye Tracking Study. Catherine and Katharine: Writing and Reading From the Sentence Up.
Boodman, Sandra G. (1995, January 17). Can Autistic Children Be Reached Through ‘Facilitated Communication’? Scientists Say No. The Washington Post. p. z.01.
Burgess, C.A., Kirsch, I., Shane, H., Niederauer, K.L., Graham, S.M., Bacon, A. (January 1998). Facilitated Communication as an Ideomotor Response. Psychological Science, 9(1), 71-74. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40063250
London, W. (2021, September 26). Facilitated Communication Validation Study Criticized. Consumer Health Digest. Issue 21-38.
Spitz, H. (1997). Nonconscious Movements: From Mystical Messages to Facilitated Communication. Routledge. ISBN 978-0805825633
Wegner, D.M., Fuller, V.A., and Sparrow, B. (2003, July). Clever hands: uncontrolled intelligence in facilitated communication, Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 85 (1), 5-19. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.85.1.5
Von Tetzchner, S. (1997, January 1). Historical issues in intervention research: Hidden knowledge and facilitating techniques in Denmark. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders. 32 (1), 1-18. DOI: 10.3109/13682829709021453
Vyse, Stuart. (2020, May 20). Of Eye Movements and Autism: The Latest Chapter in A Continuing Controversy. Skeptical Inquirer.
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