Episode 289: Dr. Barry Prizant (Part 2): Is “Spelling to Communicate” Authentic Communication?
This week, we share part 2 of Chris and Rachel’s interview with Dr. Barry Prizant! Dr. Prizant shares more about his thinking on the term "neurodivergent" and some of his experiences working on his podcast (uniquelyhuman.com) with an autistic adult co-host. Dr. Prizant also shares some of his perspectives on Spelling to Communicate, including why he believes it is an authentic communication method for some individuals.
Key Ideas this Week:
🔑 When considering whether the term “neurodivergent” is an accurate way to describe a person, we need to be cognizant of asking people how they identify with those terms. It is often better if we let people decide for themselves how we talk about them.
🔑 Some autistic people have said that the way an autistic person talks and acts is part of autistic culture, and should not be seen as a deficiency or rudeness.
🔑 Dr. Prizant believes that Spelling to Communicate is authentic communication for some individuals and a real phenomenon. He shares why he believes ASHA’s position statement against Spelling to Communicate is incorrect, and why Spelling to Communicate should not be looped in with Rapid Prompting Method.
Transcript of the Episode
Please Note: This transcript was generated using speech recognition & AI tools; it may contain some grammatical and/or spelling errors.
00:00:08
Welcome to Talking With Tech. I'm your host Rachel Madel, joined as always by Chris Bugaj. Hey, Chris.
00:00:12
What's going on, Rachel?
00:00:14
It is the second part of a really big interview that we did with Barry Prizant.
00:00:20
Yes. So this portion of the interview as something that happens in this this portion of the interview, we want to prepare people for it and we're like, where did this question come from? So the the the bulk of the interview was talking about Gestalt language processing which we mentioned last time is sort of a controversial topic and people are wrestling with trying to figure out how to mesh the world of AAC and Gestalt language processing. Another topic that has come up in for a while now has been the idea of or. This the therapy strategy of spelling to communicate.
00:00:53
Specifically that strategy spelling to communicate. And Barry has been a little bit outspoken on his podcast about that particular strategy and how that it is authentic communication. He's embracing it and saying that the world should embrace it. And so having the opportunity to chat with him and it being something that has come up in your neck of the woods and there and in your sphere of people that you that you run into clients for instance and parents talking about it and asking you about it and clinicians talking about it, certainly I'm fielding questions with it. In my neck of the woods where different parents might be coming in with questions or therapists that I work with have questions about it, we thought.
00:01:34
We thought here we have a guy that is has been outspoken about it. So let's give him some opportunities to kind of explain his rationale and what his thoughts are on it.
00:01:45
And so we do, yeah. So as much as I have wrestled in my clinical practice with fusing the world of AAC and everything I know about AAC with Gestalt language processing, I've also felt similarly with spelling to communicate. This is an approach that just keeps coming up in my, in my, in my world, in my clinical practice, my my clients are coming to me asking me questions. Some of my clients are going to practitioners to work on spelling to communicate and it's been really, you know, an interesting kind of evolution for me. You know, on this podcast we are really cognizant of being open to new ideas so that we can evolve as clinicians and we can have a healthy dialogue around, you know, things that maybe we don't understand or even disagree with at times.
00:02:37
The way to move through that is by having conversations about it. So Barry was on the podcast and I was like, there's no better person to ask. Barry has actually interviewed autistic adults on his podcast that use spelling to communicate. And so I felt like it was a great opportunity to ask him about it and to get his thoughts and also to kind of open up the conversation to things that, you know, I don't know enough about to really make a decision about. But I'm listening and I'm curious and I feel like we, you know, really try to do that on this podcast and I'm excited that we were able to have this conversation with him.
00:03:14
So let's listen to part two of our interview with Barry Prizant. Hello, Talking with tech listeners, I am Mindy Oakes and we are inviting you to join Dynamic Conversations with a community of people who are working together to make the world accessible for everyone at all times.
00:03:40
And I'm mailing Chan and we're so excited to share the Exceptional Alliances, Epic Accessibility event to talk about all of the ways we can optimize how the world is experienced.
00:03:49
That's right, mailing. Accessibility isn't just about entry and curbs. It's about vocabulary, policy, innovation, research, how we access the world electronically, and so much more. Join Exceptional Alliances on October 20th and interact with intimate round table discussions about advancement and accessibility and live experiences.
00:04:14
Registration's free and it's important to remember that just by registering you are actively supporting virtual event access, which demonstrates creates a value and continued interest in virtual events and supports accessibility. So grab your free spot at exceptionalalliances.com and we look forward to chatting with you during the event.
00:04:40
I do a workshop on neurodiversity and. I have the bell curve and I under an asterisks about 7-8 different areas that you need to consider what that bell curve applies to. OK, so again, individuals on the spectrum who have an exceptional. Rote memory or let's take another example, calendar calculators. OK.
00:05:05
So I mean they could tell you, you know if you give them a date in the future, what date it falls on, you know, September 19, the year 3000. OK, well that falls on a Tuesday. You know it's like that certainly would be Neuro divergent. It's well beyond the bell curve abilities or the the majority of what the bell curve. Ability would be for most people, and I don't think that's emphasized enough yet.
00:05:32
It's spoken about when we talk about, for example, employment for people who are neurodivergent. Let's look at the areas that they may show, relatively and not even relatively absolutely strong abilities or exceptional abilities, and let's have them participate in employment settings so they can apply that strength. OK. So I I use the term neurodivergent when a person is kind of beyond what we would expect in the general population, the majority of what that bell curve tells us. Yet having said all of that, we're still working out these definitions.
00:06:19
OK. So you and and you're correct when you said that. You know, neurodiverse really shouldn't be applied to a single person or diversity is a larger group of people. Yet people I still see and in some cases people I know who've published, you know, in peer reviewed research saying, oh, that person is neurodiverse, meaning that they have some condition which we would call neurodivergent.
00:06:48
So yeah, I think it also becomes complex when we're thinking about who designates that label too, right? Is it the individual themselves identifying as neurodivergent? And I think that that conversation is really interesting too to think about like, you know, someone who will say is quote UN quote neurotypical, like then classifying someone else as neurodivergent. Like, I think it gets kind of like Muddy Waters when we start thinking about the classification itself. And I think it goes back to being really cognizant of asking individuals, you know, how they identify, which I think has been such a lesson in the last five, five years.
00:07:33
For me, it's just in general across all different areas, right? It's like let people decide what language we use and ask them to have the conversation.
00:07:43
You know, that's a fabulous point. I want to give an example to highlight that. People on the spectrum who might have more sophisticated language abilities maybe would have gotten Asperger's diagnosis in the past. But I think it goes for more people than just that, though those people are now. Some people are now saying, well, wait a second, you know the fact that I say things very directly to you?
00:08:12
You might perceive it as rude. OK, I perceive it as efficient communication. And so do other autistic people. So now there's this discussion of autistic communication, and you could probably relate this to AAC much better than I can, that we now some people are saying it's our culture. So within a meeting of all or mostly autistic people, we're not going to schmooze, schmooze and say give a lot of small talk.
00:08:44
We may talk a lot less, but when we have something to say. It's going to be important and direct, whereas through the eyes of a neurotypical person, not schmoozing and you know it's seen as rude and out of the norm, so. It's an interesting, I think there has to be more discussion about this, but I think it's interesting. Yeah, let me just comment on it for a second. So in our neck of the woods, many, I think many places, many meetings start with something called connection before content where you do some sort of game of some sort where you maybe throw up a picture of 6 different Will Ferrell's and you say which were Will Ferrell are you today, are you the happy one or the sad one?
00:09:32
And there's. Some people that I leave that meeting and I talk to them and I say, hey, what did you think about that connection before content? They're like, oh, we're doing that again like why it's such a waste of time. Can we just get to the meeting already And and I wouldn't say that they're, well, this is, this is my question about neurodivergent, neurodivergent versus neurodivergent, is that are they neurodivergent because they are also annoyed with having to do this sort of small. Saw a game play where, like you just described, maybe a group of autistic individuals would have cut that and said I'm just going right to the content.
00:10:13
It feels like just some humans are annoyed by by it and some are not. Yeah, but it is to a great extent culturally determined. You know whether we see a person as being neurodivergent or not. So let let me give you some concrete examples, OK? On our podcast we interviewed Jules Edwards.
00:10:38
Jules is an Ojibwe autistic woman and let me give a plug here. She co-authored a wonderful book that's called I Will Die on This Hill and with Megan Ashburn who has a wonderful Facebook book club. And on our podcast interview, Jules said. There's no word for autism in Ojibwe language. There's no word for disability in Ojibwe language.
00:11:06
I have an uncle who is clearly, by Western psychiatric standards, autistic, and he's an incredibly talented beadworker and everybody knows him as a man who doesn't talk much but who's brilliantly talented in his beadwork. So within that culture, but just in general, and I I'm sorry if this is a stereotype, but just in general, a lot of our native cultures in the United States think of a person who talks a lot is very superficial. So a schmoozer is, you know, I don't think that person thinks very deeply or whereas a person who very rarely talks, but when they talk it's something to the point and very important, is considered to be highly intelligent and valued. As a as a person and often becomes a leader for a tribe. So I I think a lot of this, you know, really depends on the culture and the norms and the conventions of that culture.
00:12:06
And I don't, I think there's some validity to some autistic people saying, well, we just have a different culture. Now let me just add one point to that, a personal point. I grew up in a culture where people are are very direct. And sometimes people often think of my speaking culture as insulting. I grew up in Brooklyn, on the on the street kid from Brooklyn, OK, I have a wife who grew up in a small town of Connecticut.
00:12:35
Even after 35 years of marriage, even to this day. Barry, can't you say that a nicer way? I'm saying, I'm just saying what I'm saying. And it actually allows me to give myself permission to be more direct in my opinions professionally. So This is why I'm sorry, I don't want to put it out there, you know, And I I call people out on stuff that maybe some academicians wouldn't quite do in the same way I've become more comfortable with that.
00:13:05
But the point is that. I grew up in a culture where people are very direct. They call people out on their stuff. Maybe they use words that are not quite yet acceptable in mainstream polite language. I watched some of those.
00:13:20
But but a lot of those events are mainstream culture. Anyway. But, but, but, but. The point is that so much of the judgments we make about a person's communication style. Is it?
00:13:36
And now I'm making a huge leap here. Is it neurotypical? Or is it a little bit outside of the range of what we expect in a person's social communication skills?
00:13:47
A certain degree of that is culturally determined, but I think we need to recognize that I want to. You mentioned your podcast, and I want to not only talk about it, but I want to say I'm a huge fan of it, which I said when I emailed you. I think you've done a really amazing job of amplifying autistic voices. So I just wanted to, you know, hear from you. So the the book Uniquely Human, which is your book, I think preceded the podcast.
00:14:19
And then you guys decided to do a podcast. You have an Autistic adult Co host, Dave, so I just want you to share a little bit about the genesis of the podcast and as a fellow podcaster, I'm a big fan.
00:14:33
Oh, thank you so much for that. It it it's a good example of the phoenix rising out of the ashes here, and I'll explain what I'm talking about. Dave Finch, who's an autistic audio engineer. I first met Dave when he contacted me a month or two after my book came out. And and this is verbatim OK, I get a phone call.
00:14:56
Hi, this is Dave Finch. You don't know me. I'm 30 pages into your book. I love you, Barry. Then we became connected out of.
00:15:09
The failed development of a what was called the Center for Neurodiversity in the Denver area. And I'm not going to get into the weeds on that, but basically the person with all good intentions did not do it the right way. And so we she never got the sponsorship. But Dave and I got to know each other, OK? And then I was told by a number of people, and I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm Tooting my horn here.
00:15:36
You know, Barry, you're really good spontaneously and and you're a good presenter or a senior presenter. You got to do a podcast and the first person I thought of was Dave because of our friendship and his incredible sense of humour. I mean, he's got just a terrific sense and he's a terrific person. I just had a meeting with Dave about an hour ago. We always have fun, you know?
00:15:58
It's always fun. And he's a pleasure to work with because he's autistic and direct and clear. And no ego involvement at all. You know, it's about, OK, well, we're here to do the best job we could do on this, you know, and and that's it. It's not like, well, you know, what you said is a little bit insulting to me or should I feel badly about this?
00:16:21
None of that stuff there. I mean, it's great. Anyway, so we just started it. Had some wonderful early guests like Steve Silberman who wrote Neurotribes. Temple Grandin was one of our early guests.
00:16:35
Basically what we said, let's try this for a few months and see how it goes. And so, you know, 83 episodes later and almost three years later, we're having a ball. And. And by the way, I hear a lot from neurotypical people who know very little about autism, who somehow have gotten into listening to the podcast and they say. This pertains to everybody's life.
00:17:00
These are human condition issues. Even though we've been terrible, we don't have really have a business model for it. We don't have advertising on it. One thing I will say and then and this is kind of newsworthy down the line, there are we hear from so many people who say, Oh my God, those five points from that interview were just incredible. So we are thinking of coming out with some short books called the Gems of the UH podcast and a subtitle might be What can we learn from Autistic people?
00:17:37
And the idea is just in formulation now. We're going to probably do it somewhere down the line. So basically Dave and I have developed this absolutely wonderful working relationship where it's. I wouldn't even say low stress. It's like no stress, you know, and and we joke about everybody saying, well, neurodiversity in practice really is about bringing people with different abilities and different strengths and weaknesses where they could complement each other.
00:18:08
And it's exactly what it is. I mean, he has the podcast expertise. He has the technology expertise. I came into this never having done a podcast, you know, and and he actually works with engineering firms and helping them develop podcasts, OK. He's an engineer himself.
00:18:28
And then the other side is I keep him on schedule. I send the little texts. Hey Dave. Don't forget we have a meeting today because Dave is incredibly talented when he has something on his plate and his mind's focused on it. But he's so busy with so many projects, You know, let me give the plug.
00:18:53
I mean, he's the New York Times bestselling author. You know his book. It's incredible. You know, about an autism marriage, An autism neurotypical marriage. The journal, it's called the Journal of Best Practices, came out in 2012, New York Times bestselling book.
00:19:12
And by the way, one of our upcoming episodes is going to be on Neurotypical.
00:19:18
Neuro divergent marriages because because he didn't.
00:19:22
Want. And we had a wonderful interview with an autistic OT, Kim Cleary, who's in an autistic neurotypical husband marriage. And so we're going to have both couples on. I'm going to let them go at it. That's going to be great.
00:19:38
Yeah, Yeah. But. But anyway, it's big. Kudos to Dave. The podcast would not be what it is.
00:19:47
Without Dave, it's it's it's the old story of the whole is much, much greater than the sum of the parts. So yeah, it sounds like you found a wonderful podcast partner. I hope someday I can find someone as well. I just can't have this. Yes.
00:20:06
Rachel and I have a very similar relationship in that way is that we can help each other in in where we amplify each other's strengths and it just sort of works, right.
00:20:17
Done that. When you were talking about how much fun you have, every time I'm with Chris, I'm just like, we're laughing. And it's funny that you said that because when I listen to your podcast, I think, like, they have such a good relationship. You guys are cracking jokes and that's what Chris and I do on our podcast. So I think it's just not only are you learning, but you're also entertaining and it's just like I think that's the best way for people to learn new information.
00:20:41
And and your listeners appreciate that and it's a way to develop trust with your audience. Now this isn't this highly programmed, memorized. It's let's have a conversation about meaningful topics and let's share our individual knowledge bases and bring it together and with guests. Absolutely. So let me wrap us up maybe with a final question here, which would be what would be We have a bunch of speech therapists, parents, teachers that listen to the podcast.
00:21:13
What would be your big take away message for them? This is what they should know. We're always learning. If anybody ever says to you I know exactly what you need to do or what needs to be done, whether you're a parent or a professional. I think the attitude is OK.
00:21:34
Let me take what you're saying that's helpful and let me kind of think about it relative to my child, my family member, my practice. I I I think when we think we know the answers to some of the most difficult questions, it closes off all kinds of opportunities for moving forward and learning. One of the thing I would say, and again, I could put on my kind of senior statesman hat here and that is. Take some time, whether you're a parent or a professional or an autistic person, to think about the journey that you're on and how it enhances your life and how in most cases, yes, there could be some real challenges to deal with, some real bumps to get over. But it is a journey and I've never met a parent or a professional or an autistic person who said would say I want to change everything because everything's wrong.
00:22:31
As I and that's a big surprise to a lot of people, when parents say if I can go back and have my child not be autistic, would I do that? Some parents say no, some parents say I'm not so sure about that. And certainly more and more autistic people are saying no, don't change me, it's who I am. You know it's a piece of who I am. Yes.
00:22:49
Support me. OK guide me. You know if I have any Co occurring conditions, mental health or physical conditions. Reduce the suffering by what you know due to those conditions, but appreciate what comes back in our personal growth. Very important.
00:23:11
I yeah, drop that mic. So before we end, Dr. Prasant, I'm a big fan of your podcast. I've listened to many episodes, especially your AAC user episodes, so I wanted to talk a little bit about spelling to communicate and autistic individuals who use spelling as a means for communication. Because you've touched on it on your podcast, and since I have you here, I want to hear your thoughts.
00:23:35
Oh, I thought it was going to be a more direct question than that. My thoughts, my thoughts are and let me just put it right out there, but that some for some individuals. It is authentic and real communication for some. OK, how do I think about that? I have friends with Asperger's who are brilliant in their speech, more articulate, more knowledgeable about more topics.
00:24:06
That's many of my neurotypical friends. I truly believe there are people who get a diagnosis of autism spectrum with such severe motor speech disorders. That they can't speak yet they still have that knowledge base to communicate. Now you might say and and I believe, I also believe that there are many non speaking people who are intellectually disabled and maybe for whom if you want to go back to FC and Doug Bicklin and I challenged Doug Bicklin on a lot of the early FC stuff early on you know who it's not authentic communication that they were highly influenced. By people working with them, especially if you see a lot of videos of people looking in the other direction while they're pointing to a letter board or whatever.
00:24:58
Let me be as specific as I could be given circumstances I've been involved in. I I don't know if you know your listeners now that we published many articles on the analysis of commutative intent and you whether be an eye early on, including articles in the Journal of Psychiatry. Of child and adolescent psychiatry in speech and language pathology. We contributed to the literature on how do we analyze commutative intentionality in people, and of course with spelling to communicate. The big issue is this is not what they're communicating, it's other people.
00:25:39
OK, I have been involved in both video analysis and live interactions. With some individuals using spelling to communicate and all the boxes were checked in terms of evidence of intentionality. And I'm talking that's number one. Number two, I've known individuals who needed physical support early on who now need none whatsoever. Like a Jordan Zimmerman, OK, like Elizabeth Bunker, OK yet.
00:26:16
How much are we asking how much support did you need in the process of getting to where you are? Where that support would have seen as would have been seen as people are just influencing you. It's not your authentic communication, so and not only that, but a number of the people who I've met interviewed who use spelling to communicate also. Have limited speech that is clearly dyspraxic speech, and sometimes they will use some of that speech clearly representative of a severe motor speech disorder. But what they spell out is far more complex communication.
00:27:03
So bottom line, we have a lot to learn. I think it is an absolute real phenomenon for some individuals I do not believe. In what some people are saying, and by the way, Elizabeth Vossler, who I know and I've met and had long conversations with, she says we're not saying this is for everybody. We're not saying everybody's going to reach that certain level. And she's extreme.
00:27:29
I know people don't know this. And Elizabeth is a developer of S2C. She had years of experience working with people with significant neurological. Required neurological conditions. So she is very, very well versed in the neurology of motor speech disorders.
00:27:49
Probably more well versed than almost anybody I've spoken to in autism. OK, so so that's where I stand. We have a lot more to learn. I really have problems with people who express strong opinions based upon some really ridiculous. Research like message passing.
00:28:12
Stuff that goes way back. Spelling to communicate is not facilitated communication. Spelling to communicate is not Rapid Prompting method. Those are very different approaches. OK, I don't know much about RPM.
00:28:32
I've not been exposed to that. I have been exposed to FC and I have been exposed to S2C. And it's a very, very different process. I will tell you, I am aware of some lawsuits about individuals not allowed to use S2C in schools, OK? And I can't get specifics at all, but in one of the lawsuits, it was the family that one, that there was enough evidence that it was authentic communication.
00:29:06
That it, it has to be allowed in the school. OK, I think we're going to see more of that. I don't know if you're I haven't seen it yet. I need to see it. There's a movie that just came out called Spellers.
00:29:19
But my personal experience is yes, we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Authentic for some individuals and not just authentic in terms of the words and the utterances that are being put forth. Turn taking. When the individuals finish spelling, they're looking down, focused on their board, looking down. When they're finished, they look upright at you.
00:29:44
So I, I, and one other thing that's very rarely discussed, and this is validated by parent experience, and I've seen it first hand. An individual with significant motor issues in general might be walking around the room stemming, you know, repetitive motor actions. When they sit down to communicate, they're relaxed and they're regulated. I don't think this has been documented enough. In other words, it's almost as if my ability to communicate is a regulating factor right now.
00:30:23
And Elaine Hall, if you speak to Elaine about her, her son Neil, and this is public, she spoke about this that. Ever since Neil became adept using multimodal communication and some of it is S2C like some of it's FC like, she said. His regulation has improved dramatically and he was not fit with the system until he was a teen. He is I believe 27 now, 28 now. So that's something else that parents report that my son or daughter is so much more focused and regulated while.
00:31:01
They're communicating and since they've been able to communicate more of their feelings. And so there might be additional, if you will, ancillary kind of benefits from this. And you know, I know that people I just ran across something on from two years ago. I hadn't seen it because I'm not a a Facebook devotee, even though I go on now and then, but I just saw this conversation. And I forget it might have been the the Facebook page on SLP's for Evidence based practice and a number of people were saying what's going on with Prazant.
00:31:43
He offered so much in the field for so many years. Now he's destroyed his legacy. He's ruined his reputation by supporting FC. That was like 2 years ago. I just ran across it.
00:31:55
Two weeks ago I went back online and said. Show me one place where I say I supported FCI, have questioned. FCI actually pushed back against Doug Bicklin in the early years. I published a chapter in Howard James book where most of the chapters were FC is just a bunch of garbage. And I said, wait, saying we've redefined autism as a motor disorder.
00:32:21
Only I have problems with that. I'm sorry, you know, but we have a lot more to learn and we still have a lot more to learn. So you know it's this black and white. OK well we see that present believes that you know spelling to communicate Mike and he interviewed my goodness. He interviewed with Dave Finch two people on the podcast and Oh my God.
00:32:43
In his book Uniquely Human on the new edition he talks about non speakers you know and all of a sudden OK, let's take Barry and flush him down the toilet and and it's it's kind of like. What I said a few minutes ago, I have been going on and on. I'm sorry what I said a few minutes. We're we're still all learning. You know, why is it now that it was a few case studies and now there are thousands around the world?
00:33:11
Could this be everybody being wrong and the wolves being pulled over everybody's eyes? I don't think so. So yeah, so we have to look carefully at each individual.
00:33:24
That's the point, yeah. And I think perhaps part of the challenge is Asha has come out and looped in spelling to communicate with facilitated communication in RPM, which is where I think the the designation that you kind of shared earlier on makes sense is that it's different from those other approaches that you know, we are familiar with is not evidence based practice according to the American Speech and Hearing Association.
00:33:53
Yeah. And and I very publicly challenged. Ash of it in a very polite way because I know higher ups and Asha, you know I I wrote to Diane Paul, Director of Clinical Affairs and I said Diane, I think you're going down the wrong track here. I think we have so much more to learn, you know and and we've had that exchange back and forth and more recently just very recently I said Asha really, really needs to revisit that because the committee that developed those position statements, some of the members and I'm saying well some of the members. Also or input to some of the members have ulterior motives and and some of them are strict dyed in the wool ABA.
00:34:35
Nothing works but ABA people and that is not a pure position statement coming from people with no. Some of these people have built their careers on bashing FC and any non speaking methods that are not traditional and so it's very self-serving. And I really do believe that at some point ASH is going to have to retract and and redevelop new position savers.
00:35:03
I think it comes full circle to the conversation we had in the beginning about evidence based practice and really listening to individuals who are saying this worked for me. You know, we can't discard the people who are saying this is the thing that worked for me. And so I think that like anything else you know our field is constantly evolving and changing and we need to be really cognizant about being open to you know approaches that we don't have enough research and evidence on or science on yet, right. Like that. Usually the clinical practice precedes the science in some cases.
00:35:38
And so it's just I think another great reminder for everyone that you know, we just need to be open and focused on families and individuals and supporting them and observing as good clinicians, you know what's working and what's not.
00:35:53
Yeah, that is beautifully stated And and I I want to add one other comment and I'm going to take the opportunity. You can edit it out if you want.
00:36:00
Let's go.
00:36:05
What? What's even worse with people saying let's throw the baby out with the bathwater is that when we do see examples, Elizabeth Bunker, Jordan Zimmerman, Do you know of Hari Sreenivasan?
00:36:20
No. OK, all these new people that I have to interview, we have to interview.
00:36:25
Hari I've been on a couple of interviews on panel interviews with Hari twice in the last year, sponsored by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. Hari is a cognitive neuroscience major who got his masters at UC Berkeley. He is now a doctoral student in cognitive neuroscience at Vanderbilt University. He is a non speaking. Autistic communicator.
00:36:52
When you see him on a zoom, like here, he's looking very autistic. He's looking away. He's rocking. And then he types. Did he fool people at UC Berkeley at a bachelor's master's level?
00:37:08
Did he fool people at Vanderbilt in the PhD cognitive neuroscience program? He types totally independently. What do people on the Asha committee on the position statement say? He's a fraud. What do they say about Elizabeth Bunker?
00:37:25
She's a fraud. What do they say about Jordan Zimmer? She's a fraud. They are unethically dissing people that they've never met because they disagree with what their abilities are. Getting out to the world right now, that's very problematic.
00:37:46
Extremely and and I've been called a lot worse than O'barry's legacy is down the toilet bowl one of these people who I don't think he no he wasn't on the because it had to be Asher people who developed the position statement. He has published a lot with some of the people who developed the position, statement Basically said. The only reason that I'm doing anything with non speaking people and speaking up is because I'm exploiting their lives for for personal gain. That's what these people do. These people engage in professional, unethical conduct, almost defamatory conduct if they disagree with people who present counter to their position.
00:38:39
Sounds like a lot of ego. Sounds like a lot of ego. Like I always do it this way and this is the way it's done and this is the only way.
00:38:48
More than ego, I would say professional insecurity. They they can't even open their mind up to say yes.
00:38:55
We need to explore that more, yeah. Or like we talk about the a lot when we're talking about pecs. We're not. Chris and I are not big fans of pecs. And, you know, people that have been doing it for years.
00:39:09
Part of the challenge is the cognitive dissonance of it can't be that I was doing it wrong all these years, right. And so I think that that's at play too, is that it can't be that everything I thought I knew, I don't know. You know. And I think it takes a really brave person to admit, you know what? I didn't know, but now I know.
00:39:28
So now I have to shift and evolve as we Start learning more.
00:39:32
Absolutely. And then let me just say, let me just take that exact point and think about the pressure on parents who've bought into you can recover or cure your child through traditional ABA, OK. And then thinking, Oh well now the literature says that they are ABA approaches are not the most effective developmental and relationship based approaches. Are the most effective. And now there's a number of studies and and meta analysis demonstrating that.
00:40:03
Think about a parent who has physically and emotionally invested in an approach that they were in many cases sold, sold, OK, it's, it's very difficult, very difficult. So yeah.
00:40:18
Well, Doctor Frazan, we are so excited that you were able to come today. This was an amazing interview you shared so much I'm so excited to share with our listeners. So before we leave, where can people get in touch with you? Where can people find your podcast, your book, all the things?
00:40:35
Sure, the podcast is The website is www.uniquelyhuman1worduniquelyhuman.com. My website is my name barrypresent.com. The certs model is certs.com. We have to develop that a little bit more and and let me just say and this is actually kind of a little bit of a premier announcement. I'm in the process with the support of some wonderful people in developing a non profit that tentatively is called the Uniquely Human Alliance where we hope to bring people of like mind and like values together.
00:41:20
So there's one place where parents and professionals could find resources. We're hoping to be a linkage for that. And so you'll be hearing from us. But, but it it's actually coming from the support of a mom, of a young child and a family and we're working on it now and there will be an announcement about that down the line. And it's not to replace what people are doing.
00:41:52
It's not to compete with what people are doing. It's bringing people together who have a similar vision as to how can we get a good person, child, family, center, developmental, relationship based work out there. Love it. Love us? Let us know.
00:42:11
We will definitely help Shout it from the rooftops.
00:42:14
Yes, we'd love to to promote that and that is definitely something that we we are passionate about both Chris and I and A lot of the listeners of this podcast. So thank you so much for coming on to to talk with us today.
00:42:25
Great. Thank you so much.
00:42:27
So for talking with Tech. I'm Rachel Madel, joined by Chris Bugaj and Doctor Barry Prizant. Thank you guys so much for listening and we'll talk to you next week.