What Reporter Natalie Beneviat from Trib Live forgot to mention about RPM

FC in the MediaFC in the SchoolsRapid Prompting Method
Written By Janyce Boynton

One of our readers (thank you!) alerted us to a recent pro-FC article by reporter Natalie Beneviat titled “’Opened a new world’: Autistic North Allegheny student breaks through with help of innovation.” The story features a 16-year-old non-speaking autistic person named Nick Canciello who was introduced to a form of Facilitated Communication called Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) by his special education teacher, Maggie Rice. Rice calls herself a “motor skills coach,” which is, apparently, yet another pseudonym for “facilitator.” As his “motor skills coach,” Rice holds a “communication device” in the air while Canciello points to it to spell out letters.

Nick Conciello being subjected to RPM (TribLive, 2024) In this still image (provided by TribLive) it looks like he is pointing in between the letters "A" and "B" not on the letters. How many times does this occur in an FC/RPM session without the facilitator realizing it?

According to Beneviat, this “communication device,” (aka a plastic letter board) has “opened a whole new world” for the young man. Canciello’s parents, Niru and Rich, seem to be under the impression that he can spell “because he’s a teenager” (probably because this is what they’ve been told by the RPM practitioner). I want to point out here that a plastic letter board has no magical powers and “being a teenager” isn’t a guarantee that a person is literate. Unless the individual has been taught directly how to identify letters and the sounds they make, along with the rules for understanding how to arrange those letters to make words, and, in turn, how to arrange the words to make meaningful sentences, having a literate assistant/facilitator/motor skills coach hold a letter board in the air isn’t going to lead the individual to independent written communication.

"Tell Them You Love Me" features Anna Stubblefied, a former Rutgers University ethics professor who was convicted of sexual assault on an individual with disabilities when she used FC as "consent" for intimate relationships with her client. (Sky Original, 2024).


We’ve seen this line of thinking before, from Anna Stubblefield, who claimed in the film “Tell Them You Love Me,” that literacy skills are innate and that FC clients don’t have to be taught how to spell or use written language. She even references Stephen Pinker (both misquoting him and erroneously calling him a neuroscientist), who wrote a book called The Language Instinct in which he argues that, to the extent to which language is innate, the development of spoken and written language depends on “normal” or “neurotypical” brain function, as well as “normal” or “neurotypical” social and perceptional interaction with the world, which is not true of individuals with autism, brain injury, or other developmental disabilities. He also points out that the so-called language instinct is “a schematic, a set of potentials, not a full-blown innate language like English.” In other words, human beings have the potential for learning and using spoken and written language, but the nuances of each language (e.g. English, French, Spanish) need to be taught. Pinker also makes a distinction between literacy (e.g., reading and writing) and “natural modes of communication” (e.g., speech, gestures, signs). Literacy is not innate.

Soma Mukhopadhyay using "RPM" with a student who is not looking at the stencil board. (From "A Mother's Courage," 2009). The young boy (Keli) was, reportedly, able to communicate full sentences in English, despite being from Iceland where English was rarely spoken in the home.

Beneviat’s article, like those we’ve seen in the past, ends up being an advertisement for Soma Mukhopadhyay’s Rapid Prompting Method (RPM), which, to date, has no reliably controlled evidence to support her claims of communication independence. (See Systematic Reviews). I’ve put links below to reviews of Portia Iversen’s book Strange Son, which documents Mukhopadhyay’s (credulous) rise in popularity in the United States.

And, while Mukhopadhyay and other promoters of RPM claim that it “works” by identifying student’s “open learning channels,” the method relies on visual, auditory, and tactile cues from a facilitator or assistant (or “motor skills coach”) to “work.” Individuals being subjected to FC/RPM essentially learn how to point toward a letter board on cue with behavioral shaping and reinforcement. Often facilitators are unaware of the extent to which they are influencing and controlling letter selection. (See An FC Primer)

In 2018, ASHA reviewed its position on FC, renewed it, and added RPM/S2C to their opposition statement.

In addition, Beneviat fails to mention that RPM use, like FC, is opposed by major educational and autism organizations, such as the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, the Association for Science in Autism Treatment, Australasian Society for Intellectual Disability, and the University of Pretoria (Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication), to name a few. (See Opposition Statements). The Australasian Society for Intellectual Disability (ASID) has a detailed statement that differentiates legitimate forms of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) from FC/RPM.

And, while proponents characterize critics of FC as “bad” or “ableist,” these organizations, dedicated to supporting the communication rights of individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities, oppose FC/RPM by citing lack of scientific evidence, concerns about facilitator cueing, control, and prompt dependency, and potential harms (e.g., false allegations of abuse) to explain their reasoning. They also warn of the ethical ramifications for practitioners who use discredited, disproven, and unproven techniques with their clients, particularly if/when the facilitator-dependent messages are determined to usurp the voices of those being subjected to the techniques.

Some of these organizations, like ASHA, have had opposition statements in place since the mid-1990s, despite periodic reviews of the literature. They continue to renew their opposition because proponents of FC/RPM have failed to test these techniques in ways that can (and do) rule in or rule out facilitator influence and control. (To date, these tests have only ruled in facilitator control which is, I suspect, why facilitators resist this type of testing).

Although proponents have always tried to argue that FC addresses motor control deficits in the individuals being subjected to it to justify facilitator “support” (e.g., cueing and control), FC was first marketed as a “communication technique.” In recent years, proponents (most likely because of the continued resistance from speech/language organizations who consistently and repeatedly call for rigorous testing) seem to have purposefully set their sights on circumventing the “communication” aspects of FC and focusing on so-called motor planning problems. Indeed, Beneviat writes in her article that RPM “involves teaching motor skills, increasing initiation and supporting an individual’s sensory system.” Sensory motor integration, like FC, is not evidence-based. Proponent claims of teaching motor skills, presumably to increase client initiation of letter selection, actually supports critics’ concerns that individuals subjected to FC/RPM are learning to point on cue. Facilitators, by “presuming competence” in their clients, generally do not consider an individual’s language (and literacy) comprehension skills when evaluating the “success” of FC/RPM. Rice even states in the article that “We’re coaching motor. We are not teaching anybody to spell.”

Beneviat reports that the parents were “skeptical” at first and conducted their own “test” by looking closely at their son while he answered questions via RPM. The FC literature is full of examples of highly motivated facilitators (and researchers) who cannot detect facilitator cueing by visual observation alone. This is, largely, due to a well-documented phenomenon called the Clever Hans effect. As Wegner and Sparrow suggest in a facilitator-focused article titled “Clever Hands: Uncontrolled Intelligence in Facilitated Communication,” belief plays a significant role in helping facilitators “feel” like letter selection is coming from someone other than themselves (akin to a well-known phenomenon exploited by magicians and illusionists called the ideomotor response). Because facilitators are often multi-tasking (e.g., holding the letter board in the air, asking and answering questions, mentally keeping track of the letters being spelled), they are likely to be unaware of the extent to which their own behaviors (e.g., shifts in body weight, moving/adjusting the board in the air, head nods, vocalizations) influence and control letter selection. And, because observers are frequently looking at the individual being subjected to FC—and not the facilitator—they miss these cues. What researchers have learned, and what Beneviat omits from her article, is that the only effective way to separate facilitator behavior from the behaviors of those being subjected to FC/RPM is reliably controlled testing that blinds facilitators from test protocols (often called message-passing tests). Perhaps not so coincidentally, this is a type of testing that facilitators are taught in their training workshops to avoid at all costs.

I find it quite telling that Canciello can only “spell like nobody’s business” when his facilitator(s) hold the board for him. If, for example, he has the ability to use a bow and arrow on his own (as suggested in the article) and without facilitator interference, then it is likely that he has the ability to independently select letters on a letter board or, if his eyes can track movements and he has no other visual impairment, he may be a candidate for legitimate, consumer-ready Augmentative and Alternative (AAC) devices that use eye tracking to help individuals communicate independently (e.g., without interference from a facilitator). Can he feed and/or clothe himself? Can he pick a potato chip off a plate? Then, it is likely he’d be a candidate for legitimate AAC devices that could support him physically should he need it. With the current state of technology, there is no need for human (e.g. facilitator) “support” during letter selection.

Personally, if I was a parent at in the North Allegheny School District, I’d be calling the superintendent and school board members and asking why staff members are using discredited, disproven, and/or unproven techniques with students. I would also ask them to watch Prisoners of Silence, and review the opposition statements of professional organizations who’ve researched FC/RPM and rejected its use. Systematic Reviews and Controlled Studies are available on our website as well. I’d also send them a copy of the following articles (not a comprehensive list):

Daly, K. & Celiberti, D. (2021). A Treatment summary of Rapid Prompting Method. Science in Autism Treatment, 18 (1).

Gorman, B.J. (2011). Psychology and Law in the Classroom: How the Use of Clinical Fads in the Classroom may Awaken the Educational Malpractice Claim. Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal, 2011 (1), 29-50.

Green, Gina; Shane, Howard C. (Fall, 1994). Science, Reason, and Facilitated Communication. Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, vol. 19(3), 151-72.

McMahon, L. F., Shane, H. C., & Schlosser, R. W. (2023). Using occupational therapy principles and practice to support independent message generation by individuals using AAC instead of facilitated communication. Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 40(1), 12–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/07434618.2023.2258398

O’Neil, Katie, and McCarthy, Rebecca. (2018, December 1). The Pitfalls of Presumptions. ASHAWIRE. https://doi.org/10.1044/leader.FMP.23122018.10

Scheibel, G., Zane, T. L., & Zimmerman, K. N. (2022). An Economic Evaluation of Emerging and Ineffective Interventions: Examining the Role of Cost When Translating Research into Practice. Exceptional Children, 88(3), 245-262. https://doi.org/10.1177/00144029211073522

Schlosser, Ralf W. and Prabhu, Anjali. (2024, February 5). Interrogating Neurotypical Bias in Facilitated Communication, Rapid Prompting Method, and Spelling 2 Communicate Through a Humanistic Lens. Current Developmental Disorders Reports.

Schlosser, R.W., Hemsley, B., Shane, H. et al. (2019). Rapid prompting method and autism spectrum disorder: Systematic review exposes lack of evidence. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 6, 403–412.

Travers, Jason C. and Pennington, Robert C. (2023). Supporting Student Agency in Communication Intervention: Alternatives to Spelling to Communicate and Other Unproven Fads. Teaching Exceptional Children. DOI: 10.1177/00400599231171759

Finally, I realize that it’s quite possible that Beneviat thought promoting this seemingly feel-good, miracle story about an individual with autism was a good idea, but this uncritical treatment of RPM—a technique by all accounts that seems (and is) too good to be true—is yet another example of how proponents take advantage of credulous reporters to peddle pseudoscience.

Janyce Boynton
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