Did you know that recent research into the brains of people with autism and speech issues has shown that many of them – probably most – actually have a motor (movement) problem and not a cognitive (intelligence/knowledge) problem? They have shown the brains of people with autism show normal ability for receptive language – which means that they probably understand everything that we are saying. It also means that they probably have normal language in their brain, but they just can’t get it out through speech because they have something called motor apraxia. Motor apraxia means their brain cannot get their body movements to coordinate and perform on command – especially fine motor movements. Speech is fine motor, and speech is the most complex and difficult of the fine motor movements to coordinate. Many people on the spectrum also have trouble doing other fine motor movements such as tying shoes and doing buttons.

So autistic people who have no detectable speech at all, and those who have some speech but can’t speak with complexity or reliability (called unreliable speakers) probably have normal language capacity in their minds that they are unable to express. Imagine how frustrating that would be.  Picture boards and other communication devices only help with the primitive choices of limited wants and needs and do not allow for the communication of any complex thoughts at all.

Recent methods of teaching communication skills to people with autism include RPM (Rapid Prompt Method) and Spelling to Communicate (S2C). There is some overlap between these two methods, but I will focus on S2C since I have more experience with that.

One of the most important things about the S2C method is what they call the “presumption of competence”. This means that you have to assume that the nonverbal autistic person in front of you understands everything you are saying and already knows a lot – based on a bank of knowledge in their head from a lifetime of absorbing everything they have seen and heard around them, despite not being able to show that in any real way. All current methods of measuring IQ require fine motor skills, which is exactly what is often missing in autism. It can be hard to shift your mindset when you have always been told that your child is intellectually disabled, to realizing that cognitively they might actually be in there, with intelligence and language in their mind beyond anything you ever thought possible. Realizing that a lack of speech, or unreliable speech does not mean being without language and intelligence can be a very emotional revelation.

S2C starts the person out on a series of three smaller letter boards, then progresses to a 26-letter board, and then eventually to a keyboard – with the goal of training the gross motor skills (which are usually better than the fine motor skills) to point to the letters and spell words. Parents are often shocked when their non-speaking child suddenly starts spelling complex words on the boards. The teacher or parent, called the Communication Partner (CP), reads the lesson, sounds out and writes down some of the spelling words, and then helps prompt the autistic person to point to letters to spell the words. The autistic child or adult spells words from the lesson, and then spells the answers to some questions from that lesson, and then eventually is able to express their own thoughts and opinions about the lesson and other topics – which leads to open communication through spelling. The prompting from the Communication Partner happens a lot in the beginning as the speller is learning the motor skills to point to the letters, and then the prompting is faded out over time as the speller learns the skill. The concept is that you “coach the motor” – in other words, how to get the brain and body to coordinate to point to the right letters. Over time this myelinates new neural pathways in the brain, until those motor skills become automatic – like how driving a car starts out as difficult and then becomes automatic. When it becomes automatic, the brain no longer has to focus on how to get to the right letter to spell a word and can just focus on what words it wants to communicate – and then open communication becomes possible. When true communication is achieved, many negative behaviors also decrease or go away as the level of frustration goes down, and the brain learns how to self-regulate now that it has a better way of expressing itself.

Many autistic people who were previously relegated to low level life-skill classes in school are now writing books and going to college. But as the founder of the Spelling Center in Oceanside, CA once said to me, “Even if your child never goes to college, wouldn’t it be great if they could tell you what they really want, who they really are, and what they did yesterday?” Parents describe what it is like to “meet” their child for the first time at an older age when they start spelling to communicate. That is amazing. True communication is everything. Every autistic non-speaker or unreliable speaker should be given this chance through this program. People with autism still have many medical issues that need to be addressed with a full biomedical evaluation and treatment plan, but directly addressing communication should now be part of that plan.

For more information on Spelling to Communicate and the Spellers Method, please read: “Underestimated” – by JB Handley, and “The Spellers Guidebook” – by Dawnmarie Gaivin, and watch the documentary, “Spellers” – (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h1rcLyznK0). Also, go to www.spellers.com for more information.