Category Archives: motor planning

Assume Competence

The current debate in autism education is between those who assume competence, have expectations of intelligence, and as a result, frequently discover minds that think behind the autistic mask. The other school of thought is reflected in this statement by ASHA. That is, to assume competence is abusive somehow. I know what presuming incompetence does. It deadens hope and kills expectation. It makes seeing the ability impossible.

No one is claiming everyone is brilliant, just that fewer nonspeakers than the experts believe, are dumb. I prefer to believe that nonspeakers may have intellectual skills not immediately evident for a variety of reasons. See here for some reasons.

Look for intelligence and you discover more. Look for disability and you get stuck in limitations.

Please enjoy this Ted Talk on finding competence by Vaish Sarathy.

The 3 P’s of Communication Skeptics

Nonspeaking does not mean non-thinking. That’s my mantra. Nonspeaking may be caused by motor issues. That’s my message. Motor issues do not cause stupidity. That’s my point.
Being locked internally because of motor issues is not the same as a language processing problem and should not be treated as such.

There is an overwhelming need for professionals to learn about autism from those who live it and can describe it in words. I am referring to the nonspeaking typer who tries to explain autism from the inside out. There are now quite a few of us, and the number is growing. Our messages are always the same. Intact mind/disobeying body. Smart head/dumb body. Thinking mind/non-thinking motor system. Not speaking is not the same as not thinking.

In the six years since my first book, Ido in Autismland, was published, only one researcher ever contacted me to learn about autism from me. That’s kind of pathetic, if you think about it. I’d like to help guide their research based on my real symptoms to help improve treatments and theories. A fair skeptic and an inquiring scientific thinker might take the time to meet a proficient typer, to ask questions, to learn about their journey to increasing fluency. But they don’t, for some reason.

All this is due to the 3 P’s that preoccupy the skeptics. Proofs, prompts and presumption of competence (or lack thereof).

Proof

In ASHA’s response to my editorial, they say they need testing proof before they can entertain the possibility that RPM might have any validity. This intrigues me for a couple of reasons. There is a need to validate claims and I think we all recognize that, but there is more than a single way to get data. Observational data and longitudinal studies, including film, would be one way. Another would be well-designed studies that factor in the motor and anxiety issues people with autism describe. Without doing so, there is a significant chance of a poorly designed study producing skewed or incorrect results.

Have there been studies and internal reviews in the so-called “evidence-based” autism treatments, such as ABA and speech therapy, as to why a significant number of nonspeaking people struggle to progress using these evidence-based methods? It is too easy an out to say progress doesn’t occur because the person is “low-functioning.” If that’s the case, it doesn’t take ten years of costly treatment to find out. On the other hand, some so-called “failures” of evidence-based treatments go on to become successes, as I did, when the treatment adequately addresses the motor issues impeding performance.

Prompts

In ABA the prompts are constant, duly noted in logbooks. In speech therapy the prompts are constant too. There are prompts in PECS, Adaptive PE, in school, in every moment, in every treatment, every day of an autistic kid’s life.

RPM uses prompts too. No surprise really. The acronym stands for Rapid Prompting Method. But the prompts do not consist of motoring someone. People are moving their own arm independently. The prompts are to look, to scan an array of letters, to reach far enough, to help someone gain skills in motor precision and in hands and eyes synchronizing for the purposes of communication. Beginners get lots of prompts. Fluent people get few, and mostly just type, though someone may say “keep going,” or someone may hold a letter board steady. As skills improve, prompts go down. Why are prompts acceptable in every autism treatment except touching letters for the purposes of communication? It’s illogical. And it’s all due to this issue:

Presumption of Competence

Well, you can either presume I’m incompetent or competent. I prefer the latter.

There are two philosophies guiding much of autism theories and education. In one there is no presumption of competence. Rather, the nonspeaking individual is determined to be low-functioning intellectually and not properly processing human speech, thus requiring simplified lessons and constant drilling. This is the prevailing theory.

In the other, there is a presumption of competence— that is, an intact mind may be buried behind a messed up motor system caused by neurological factors. Therefore, if the person is taught to move properly to point and spell words, that person may learn to express thoughts and potentially get a more normal education. Many, once thought to be hopeless cases, have proven that, like books, they shouldn’t be judged entirely by their cover.

That has been true for me and for many, many others. That is why I wrote my editorial, my blog and books. The professionals who insist they speak for science too often ignore evidence that may intrude on their theories, but facts will out. There are more typers each day, and once someone has a voice, he or she wants to speak out.

Art for Fine Motor Challenges

IMG_1762I have found a great way to enjoy art without having dexterity in my hands. These mosaics were pretty fun to make and were something I could do despite my clumsy hands. The design is up to you, limited only by your imagination and the number of pieces in each color.

IMG_1456(For those interested, the product is Colorado by Hearth Song). *Note: I am hearing that the product is no longer available, so perhaps it has been discontinued by Hearth Song. A friend got me mine at a garage sale, so maybe it can be found used on eBay, or possibly something similar is manufactured by another wooden toy company.

IMG_1731ido mosaic

More on Autism and Exercising

I have received a lot of questions about exercise and autism since my last post. From my own experience, when I was small one of my OTs looked at me and remarked that I had low muscle tone like most people with autism. She then did nothing to work on fitness. She loved the swings, however, like most of my OTs to vestibular and propriocept me.

In school my APE teacher followed a routine I believe must have been designed for a different motor disorder than mine. The movements were too hard for me to motor plan at the time which led to frustration.

Most people don’t imagine that people like me have the potential to be fit. I know it’s possible. It takes longer than a normal motor system to improve but it can still improve. It can be hard at first, so persistence through resistance is essential. You have to be aware of real challenges like motor planning, muscle and tendon tightness and other issues common with autism that can interfere with success. For example, bilateral movements, moving arms and legs simultaneously in an exercise, and transitioning movements can be really hard for some people and frustrating until more motor control is achieved. People make a lot of adaptations to compensate for the motor difficulties. For example, if jumping sideways is hard to plan, a person might consistently turn forwards. You can build up to the skill incrementally in many ways, such as stepping sideways at first, stretching the hips and working on jumping in general. If someone can jump forward with ease but takes many seconds to jump sideways or backwards, you are likely looking at motor planning challenges which can improve with practice.

The goal is to make moving fun as well as a key to emotional balance and fitness.

Good luck!

Autism Exercises

Exercise helps me in every way. When I was young I suffered daily from having a mind that couldn’t control my body well. It made it hard for people to realize I was intelligent. I have worked for years on improving this skill and continue to do so. One of the ways I do this is through exercise.

I believe exercise is incredibly important in helping people with autism. I use exercise often to help me control my feelings or my energy level. Of course, it also helps me to have better mind/motor communication, better motor planning, better fitness and even to participate in certain physical activities or sports I never could do before.

I exercise in a variety of ways including hiking, bicycling, riding a scooter, jogging on a treadmill, swings and trampolines, as well as working out with  trainers.

I share below a few short film clips of me working out as well as a photo of me sawing a tree branch on a two-man saw with my dad.

Parents: Don’t be afraid if your kid isn’t fit yet or even into moving. It took me a long time to get to this point. You can build up the skills and interest over time by starting slowly but making it a part of the regular routine. It’s so worth it!

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Motor Difficulties in Severe Autism

Last year I was asked by two neuro-researchers to describe my mind/motor problems to be part of a scholarly research paper they were publishing in a neurology journal. My personal experiences helped support their clinical findings. In other words, their data was validated by my life experiences. Unfortunately, papers get rejected all the time in scientific journals. I believe and hope their findings will still be published, however my essay will not be included as the editors determined that what I wrote was too personal and unscientific for their venue (meaning not research based). This is true. My essay is not research based. It is biographical. My essay is merely a description of my life and struggles that I hoped would intrigue more researchers to look into motor issues and autism.

I figure, why waste a perfectly good essay? The editors suggested I find another venue to publish my essay and I decided that my blog is the perfect venue to share “Motor Difficulties in Severe Autism.”

Motor Difficulties in Severe Autism

by Ido Kedar

Most theories about severe autism that are used today by educators and other professionals are based on the premise that severe nonverbal autism is a learning problem with receptive and expressive language delay, low cognitive capacity, concrete thinking, lack of humor, lack of empathy, lack of theory of mind, and often even an absence in basic awareness of the surrounding world. The expressionless faces, inability to make eye contact, the sometimes bizarre looking self-stimulatory behavior, and the inability to speak can make intelligent people appear not to be. As a person with autism, this is deeply frustrating. When I meet strangers for the first time, they often presume I need baby talk because of my outer presentation. I cannot stop my neurological forces from camouflaging my real essence. Inside there is a person who thinks, feels, jokes, and has a lot to say. On the outside, people see my odd movements.

If I had not been taught how to control my hand enough to type with my index finger on a keyboard, iPad or letter board, my ideas, jokes and thoughts would have been known only to myself. This is how it is for thousands of people with autism who cannot communicate. Their outside appearance is compromised by strange compulsive movements like hand flapping, waving strings, carrying random objects around, pacing, impulsive actions and odd vocalizations, and beyond that they may have difficulty following directions to simple tasks or questions, adding to the impression that they are intellectually delayed. The challenge for professionals is to imagine that in spite of a person having these very visible external challenges, for many, these behaviors have nothing to do with intelligence but rather are due to a disconnect between the brain systems responsible for thought and movement.

I hope to prompt a conversation among professionals, researchers, parents and others to reconsider current treatment trends. It is my hope that more and more severely autistic people receive a normal education, be able to express their thoughts and ideas and be able to live full lives, as I struggle to do every day.

Not Speaking is Not the Same as Not Thinking

If a person cannot speak, cannot control his hand to write, cannot control his facial muscles to express his feelings at will (hence the flat affect of autism), cannot gesture, and cannot hold a pencil to write, how can this person prove that he understands? Why is it commonly assumed that a person with these challenges has cognitive delay when everything I mentioned in the previous sentence can also be seen as an example of a motor issue? When I was a small child I had ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) therapy forty hours a week. I sat at a table and I was asked to demonstrate my understanding of basic concepts by pointing to flashcards arrayed in front of me during drills. My instructors took data regarding whether I pointed to the right card or not. They thought they were collecting data on my receptive understanding of language. They were not. I understood everything, as any other child my age would. The data they were collecting, though they did not know it, actually measured my poor ability at that time to get my hand to touch with accuracy the card I wanted, and did not reflect an accurate measure of how much I understood. My mind might be screaming, “Touch tree! Don’t touch house!” and I would watch, like a spectator, as my hand went to the card my hand, not my brain, wanted. And down in the data book it would be marked that I had not yet mastered the concept of tree. This is the neurological force that needs to be studied.

The inability I had to express my ideas verbally, in addition to these motor difficulties, meant that I was locked internally. Unlike Stephen Hawking who lost his motor control progressively as an adult, but who is widely recognized to be an intelligent person despite being unable to speak or control his hand, I was born with my speech problem. From my earliest education, the presumption was that I was limited and didn’t understand. How could I prove otherwise when I was never taught to communicate until years later? If Stephen Hawking had been born with his current communicative disability, would the experts who assumed I was unable to understand language, have believed the same about him and never given him his assistive technology? I argue that many nonverbal autistic people are intellectually normal but are locked internally in bodies that do not obey their minds, making them appear to not understand. They deserve the opportunity to learn how to communicate.

Body-Mind Disconnect

When I was young my body rarely obeyed my mind. If I wanted to say no, my mouth said yes. If I wanted to say yes, my mouth said no. For example, I remember going to a restaurant with my family when I was small. I wanted to eat chicken. My mother asked me if I wanted to eat beef. In frustration I heard my mouth say “yes.” I had no way to correct this and got stuck with a dinner I didn’t want. This kind of frustrating experience happened often because of the unreliability of my verbal responses. I had similar unreliability with my motor system. As I described in the previous section, if I wanted to point to a flashcard in an ABA drill my hand often went to the wrong card against my mind’s wishes. My mind would tell me to walk to one room. My feet would insist on taking me to another. My mind wanted to open the car window. My hand repeatedly went to the door. My hands could not count the right number of straws or forks, though my mind knew the right number. This frustrating experience is is like gambling by rolling dice. My dice might land on my body not listening to me at all, or perhaps it would land on enabling me to do an action partially and inadequately, or perhaps it would land me on another neurological tangent altogether in self-stimulatory movements, or if I was lucky, the dice might land on enabling me to do exactly what I wished to do.

In my book (Kedar 2012), I describe how when I was small we visited relatives and my mother instructed me to give my aunt a bouquet of flowers. The problem was that my aunt was behind me and my other relatives were in front of me. What does a kid do who cannot initiate a search motorically? I gave the flowers to the person I saw, knowing it was not my aunt. If I grabbed the wrong can from the shelf after being instructed to get an item, it was not because I lacked the knowledge of what tuna fish was, it was because at that time I lacked the ability to search and scan. I still cannot adjust my blankets in bed or even initiate moving to get another blanket if I am cold. Does that mean I’m too stupid to identify how I feel? No, it means I can’t get my body to do what I want it to do, when I want it to, with reliability and consistency. This is entrapment. It is not receptive and expressive language confusion, and most definitely not a lack of thought, emotions and awareness. In my opinion, this is like a paralysis of intentional responses. When it comes to self-stimulatory behavior, I often cannot get my body to stop moving to its internal impulses though I may desperately want it to, and at other times, such as when I lie in bed unable to move to my desire to pull on another blanket, I cannot get my body to listen to me at all.

Finally, there are times when impulses completely overcome the mind like a lizard brain overcoming my intellect. I found cotton candy nearly impossible to resist when I was young and I seldom got it because it was so full of sugar and food coloring. My family and I might be walking through a crowded fair, and if I spotted a kid eating cotton candy, I might quickly snatch off a piece and pop it in my mouth, if no one was fast enough to stop me. The kid would glare at me and my family would be embarrassed and apologize. I did this despite knowing right from wrong. The lizard urge to grab cotton candy defeated the intellectual knowledge of manners. These kind of overwhelming urges can be hugely hindering in the life of a person with autism.

 

Improvement through Communication and Exercise

My skills, though far from perfect, have improved a great deal because I can type now on a letter board or iPad. Each year my motor control becomes more under my own control. I communicate by one finger typing and that is the best I can hope for. Still, my one finger typing or pointing to letters is the difference between stagnation in a low remedial autism program or receiving a general education. It is the difference between being thought to be a concrete thinker and being known to be funny, kind, compassionate and intelligent. My one finger typing is the equivalent of sign language to a deaf person. It is my modality of communication and it gives me access to the world and control over my life.

Since I believe my mind/body disconnect is a key to my odd movements and body apraxia, I have found that a vigorous exercise program focusing on strength, coordination and flexibility has helped me with my motor control tremendously, because the fitter I am physically, the more my body obeys my mind. Exercise also helps with my emotional equilibrium and helps to reduce the constant anxiety that so many people with autism experience.

 

A Human Rights Issue

Communication is a basic, innate human need and humans have an innate capacity for understanding and expressing language. The assumption that people with severe autism all have impaired thinking has resulted in the underestimating of the true abilities of thousands of individuals, lack of adequate educational opportunities, isolation, loneliness, boredom, frustration, hopelessness, and a life of entrapment within one’s own body. This price is too high.

My recommendations are many. The first is to stop assuming one knows what is in the mind of a person with severe autism simply because of what he shows externally. My outside is not my most flattering presentation because of all my odd movements and behaviors, but I believe I am a smart person who deserves opportunities in life. The educators and many professionals I worked with before I could type were limited by their low expectations of their students. Applying the same words they used to describe their students, they were resistant to new ideas, resistant to change, and rigid and concrete in visualizing the possibility of their students having greater potential.

In my book (Kedar 2012), I wrote about how I would have liked to have been taught when I was young. Here are my recommendations.

Give people with autism the benefit of the doubt.

Speak normally to them.

Teach grade level lessons in school.

Work on real physical fitness early. We need smart fitness trainers more than swings.

Look at people who have successfully taught typing to severely autistic people. Do their students progress and become increasingly independent in their communication? Does this not demonstrate something worth exploring?

Finally, listen to those people with autism who have broken through their silence to be able to describe their experiences. We offer insights from the inside. This is valuable because our outsides mislead and theories can go astray as a result.

 

 

 

References

 

Kedar, I. (2012). Ido in Autismland: Climbing Out of Autism’s Silent Prison. Charleston, SC, Sharon Kedar (October 25, 2012).

 

 

Out of the Closet

 

Every day I meet new communicators. Not babies, but kids in elementary school, teens and young adults. Their lives had been limited in one way communication for way too many years. They listened but they had no way to answer. In any case, they heard people. Many of them heard their parents moan and groan and say comments like, “I don’t know how much intelligence is there. I don’t think he understands much.” They listened to their teachers say things like, “He isn’t aware of right from wrong. He isn’t aware of his surroundings. He is oppositional today.” They listened to ABA specialists tell them, “No, try again,” “No, try again,” “No, try again,” and “High five. Good job.” They heard a world that thought they were dumb. But the world in this case was wrong.

It isn’t a lack of intelligence to be able to think but to not be able to get your body to show it. It is being trapped. If I put your hands into baseball mitts and your tongue was trapped in gooey sludge and couldn’t move right and I bombarded you with questions, I think you would agree you would have a hard time showing that you had an intact mind, especially if those baseball mitt hands moved differently to your thoughts and wishes sometimes, and everyone assumed that people with sludge tongues and baseball mitt hands were intellectually low.

I know the way to escape this isolation is not to tell sludge tongues and baseball mitt hands to move in ways they can’t. It is to teach those hands to point to letters, to type with one finger and to communicate. There is now a steady tide of people, once thought to be dumb, once thought to need baby lessons and baby talk who are mastering communication on letter board and typing. And voila! Not dumb!

More than anything they find relief being recognized as intelligent. And some find even more; a mission, friendship, a life of meaning. But none will go back into the closet of silence.

I wonder if you are a parent, teacher or professional and you have seen a “dumb” kid prove himself smart, how do you react with other kids? How long should they wait for you?

Autism and the Challenge of Rapid Motor Planning and Initiation in New Situations


My high school has an old farm because it has a magnet program for intensive studies in veterinary science and agriculture. It is really nice because the students care for the animals. Over vacation we have to feed them. There are rabbits, hens, sheep, goats, a horse and a llama. The goats are intelligent and eager to escape to eat leaves. They have the same lock the sheep have on their pen. The sheep can’t open it but the goats open it with ease. To stay in, they require an additional chain and clasp lock and if it isn’t on just right, they escape.
Today was my turn to feed, water, clean and exercise the animals (that is, I exercise and clean the horse and feed and water the rest). We went to give the goats fresh water and in a flash they opened the gate and rushed out to eat leaves. They group up and run away and resist you too so it can be a struggle to get them back in, and the first ones you catch only want to escape to get back to the leaves and their friends.
I was watching this because I was with my mom who asked me to help her with the gate. I am able to do everything I need to do, more or less, but it felt frustrating today because I saw that I still react so slowly in a moment that required speed. I knew I needed to move fast because she had a goat at the gate and didn’t want to lock up the gate completely since there were more she had to put back in the pen. They struggle to get back to their leaves with great intensity and it is a pain to hold a struggling goat with one hand and fumble with a lock with the other.
Autism is an initiation disorder too. I see where I should go and I stay frozen. Doing new tasks is tough because our bodies need to learn the steps. The steps in this moment would be clear to a neuro-typical body, but not to mine. Though my mind knew what to do, it just wasn’t ready to react in time. This is frustrating personally, but perhaps even worse is that our difficulty initiating certain responses confuses many specialists who then assume we don’t understand logic and basic problem solving.
It isn’t the thinking that’s the problem. It is the ability to react and follow our thoughts that we struggle with. I see my skills have improved, because eventually I got to the gate and held it against goats pushing with all their might to escape again. In the end, we got them all back in. Maybe next time we should let them out on purpose so I can get more practice reacting to emergency situations more quickly.

Motor Planning and Autism

Clues into non-verbal autism can be found by observing how we move. It is obvious that moving in certain ways is difficult for us. It is easy to be idle when your body frustrates, but we must fight that. My exercising has helped me a lot, though I am far from my goals. In exercising I struggle with many things, but one of the most challenging is doing different upper and lower body movements at the same time. My body will do one or the other. It takes all my concentration to just do the legwork if the movement is even a little complicated. If you add in arms to my steps, I need to stop my feet. This is an obstacle in sports, as you can imagine. In sports you need to run and catch (or whatever). I can’t do that at all. I run or I catch. Period. If I work out and I march in place and then I have to do arm lifts with hand weights at the same time, my brain sort of thinks, “huh?”
The ability to do different actions, arms and legs, is something most people take for granted. It is very frustrating to fight your body the way we do. Some people with autism are frail. Some are soft. But we all need to work on our movements and muscle development. In autism it is the disconnect between our intentions and movements that is so challenging.