Woody Brown doesn’t look at the letter board as he allegedly spells. Mom explains this away by saying he needs to look elsewhere to maintain focus.
One of the fiercest criticisms of S2C or RPM (rapid prompting method) is that the speller rarely keeps his eyes on the letter board.
In standard keyboard touch typing, the user (such as myself) never has to look at the keys. That’s why it’s called touch typing. I know which letters to tap strictly by feel.
Keyboard letters are elevated enough that the user can feel where they are, similar to how a pianist can play without looking at the keys.
However, a “letter board” that’s used for S2C or RPM is perfectly flat.
There is no way to feel where any letter is. Instead, the user must keep their eyes trained smack on that board the entire time they’re spelling.
The human eye is not designed for detailed peripheral vision, even at a slight angle.
I recently read yet another story of an autistic man, Woody Brown, who communicates through a letter board, and like all the rest of these questionable stories, he possesses the verbiage skills of a professional journalist or someone with a master’s degree in English.
In these stories, the speller never has average or mediocre word useage. The narrative that’s supposedly spelled out by these nonverbal individuals — every single time — has the composition of someone with very advanced literary skills.
And, as always, someone holds the letter board before them, which opens the door to the possibility of the ideomotor effect: The assistant subconsciously moves the board so that the user taps the letter that the assistant thinks they’re about to tap.
In Woody Brown’s case, his tapping is too quick for his mother Mary to move the board via some subconscious action.
This kicks the door wide open for purposeful deception — for the purpose of promoting the novel, “Upward Bound,” that perhaps Mary herself wrote. There are just too many bugs in her claims.
Clever Explanation for Woody’s Wandering Eyes During S2C and RPM
So Mary has devised an ingenious explanation for why her son never keeps his eyes on the letter board, which she holds before him (but conveniently doesn’t explain, in the article I had read, why the board can’t be fastened to a small mount to replicate the positioning or why it can’t just be set on a table or his own lap without her touching it).
In fact, why doesn’t Woody himself hold the board? In these cases, the go-to explanation by the parent is that their adult child’s poor motor control prevents holding these lightweight boards in one hand and pointing to letters with the other.
What’s a better explanation is that if Mom hands the board over to her son and gives the prompt for tapping, he might end up straying from the command and fussing or stimming with the board.
Apraxia (poor motor control) exists, but why is it the claimed barrier for self-holding the board for every single one of these cases? That sounds mighty fishy.
Mary wants people to believe that her son spells out complex narrative, and that all she does is hold the board.
In one of Woody’s responses to the reporter in the room for the article I read, he states that he can’t keep his eyes on the board while tapping at the letters and instead must look at two computer screens beside him, alternating his eyes between those screens, the board and even elsewhere — all while simultaneously spelling out literally paragraphs.
His reason is because otherwise, to keep his eyes on the letter board, he’d become overwhelmed and wouldn’t be able to communicate.
This is not believable because, as already explained, the human eye can’t process details via peripheral vision.
And tapping letters on a board held before oneself requires detailed visual processing that can’t possibly be attained while looking even 10 degrees away.
If you’re a “hunt and peck” typist, give it a try: Hunt and peck out a simple sentence on a standard keyboard while keeping your eyes fixed just 10 degrees off to the side – even a few degrees.
If your excuse for failing to see the letters is because they’re not as big as those on a letter board, then create a letter board and give it a try. Put a dab of ketchup on your index finger so you know where you tapped. Good luck spelling even “C-A-T.”
Also, in a photo that accompanies the story, Mary is holding a small letter board, not the typical big ones we’ve seen. This would make it even more difficult to identify letters in peripheral vision, let alone spell strings of sentences. Actually, it’s impossible. Period.
The real “speller” in this man’s case is his mother, whose explanation for the wandering eyes is actually rather crafty. I can see how it may get past some naive readers of her son’s story.
But it doesn’t get past ME. And I’m sure, many other readers, who’d be thinking, “Yeah, right; nice try, Mom. Not buying it.”
Other Suspicious Features of Woody Brown’s Story
The article I had read was very lengthy and full of details, such as Woody’s love of a certain kind of train, and what his voice sounds like when he imitates voices on TV.
Yet for some reason, the author left out important details, such as why the mother holds the letter board instead of it being on his lap or he himself holding it, and why she had to be alongside him for every minute during his college classes (he has a bachelor’s and master’s degree).
Let’s assume that this guy is actually spelling out such incredibly advanced, eloquent narrative, ripe with amazing similes, metaphors and other complex syntax.
If his brain has this capacity, why would he need his mother to sit beside him in all his college classes (where she also said he’d have his two screens going to prevent over-stimulation while simultaneously listening to professors).
Spoken language is not necessary to take a college class. At my college there were students with cerebral palsy who couldn’t utter a single word. Two immediately come to mind: Patti and Jimmy.
An article about Patti in the university’s newspaper said she wanted to be a writer. She typed on a standard typewriter to communicate, using a stylus that was attached to a special headband – as she had no control of her fingers.
Jimmy was working on his master’s in biochemistry. He’d often be seen scooting around on campus in his electric wheelchair. He used a rudimentary device that sounded out basic words (this was many years ago before the development of today’s sophisticated AAC devices).
Neither Patti nor Jimmy had aides with them in their classes.
So why was this autistic man, fully able-bodied, needing his mother in every single class? Something tells me SHE’S the one who got the bachelor’s and master’s.
This Just Isn’t Believable
Mary is a college English graduate plus worked for many years as a story analyst in the film industry.
Holy moly off the bat, this answers the question of where her son’s ultra-advanced narrative comes from: her!
While the story’s reporter was interviewing, he was seated away from Mom and her son who were sitting side by side.
Thus, the journalist was not able to see where on the board Woody was tapping. Instead, all the reporter could do was listen to Mary recite what her son was supposedly spelling.
And maybe that reporter did request sitting on Woody’s other side, and maybe Mary told him this would distract him, over-stimulate him and/or he’s not comfortable with strangers sitting close to him. It’s just suspiciously strange that the writer wasn’t right beside him to get a closer look at what was going on.
And the quoted recitations by Mary — quite a few of them in large chunks — were grand essay style. It just didn’t ring true — not even for an autistic person — to answer a reporter’s questions with such overly formal diction.
It just came across as so … promotional – because Woody Brown is being touted as the first “nonspeaking” autistic person to author a published novel. (He actually has speech, but very limited and mostly in the form of repeating words from the TV.)
Mom said that when he was three, she took him to see a woman who claimed she taught her nonverbal son to type.
Why would a woman feel this desperate when her son was only three?
When my nephew was three, he still wasn’t talking. His mother enrolled him in speech therapy. I mean, come on, bringing a three-year-old to a stranger to see if he could learn to type? Not sure if I should believe that. However, anything’s possible, right?
Mary claims the mother of the typing son wrote letters on pieces of paper and placed them, jumbled up, before the three-year-old. The typing son’s mom then told the preschooler to spell “cat.” He lined up the correct pieces of paper.
You might be wondering where this three-year-old learned to spell (the article conveniently omits this).
But the thing that jumped out at me was that a woman with an English degree and 20 years’ experience as a story analyst had not thought to try this incredibly simple experiment with her child, and instead, brought the child to a stranger to provide ideas.
Seems to me that anyone with an English degree would easily think to put Scrabble tiles before their preschooler for this experiment, or at least print letters on pieces of paper off a notepad.
How could this idea escape an English graduate who’s a story analyst?
I’ll tell you how: Because much of this story comes across as made up. It seems to be all a guise to promote Woody’s novel, which I believe MARY authored, not him.
Again, why didn’t the reporter sit at Woody’s side to watch where he “tapped”?
If I had been the interviewer, I would’ve mandated sitting right beside the young man to watch which letters he pokes at – or no story, Mom.
I’m still waiting for that opportunity to interview a nonverbal or minimally speaking autistic individual, to see with my very own eyes, that they’re poking at letters to form sentences — without anyone holding the damn board.
Now of course, I truly believe that some nonverbal or semi-verbal Autistics actually do this independently, but their verbiage is simple, may even be only phrases such as “WANT PIZZA” or “WHERE IS DAD.” And they do this while focusing their eyes on the board.
But paragraph after paragraph of literary affectation? I need to witness this to believe it, rather than believing everything I read online. Talk about fake news.
Anyone who can spew out reams and reams of highly sophisticated narrative via letter board would, you’d think, be capable of learning to hunt and peck type to a computer screen, which would take less time and make the proof easily visible to anyone present.
The messages appearing on the screen would be an objective occurrence, vs. simply taking the mother’s word for it that what she “reads” aloud as her son taps is actually what he’s spelling out.
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association does not recognize S2C, RPM or FC as proven forms of independent communication. Clinical studies have failed to validate these modes.
UPDATE: “The Today Show” has covered this story and it’s on YouTube.
The proof that Woody’s book authorship is a hoax can now easily be observed by viewing him tapping the board at 0.25 playback speed.
The 28-year-old’s finger not only points to random letters, but at times (three clips of this total), his finger makes contact with the space between letters!
Though some viewers can detect this at normal speed, any person will for certain catch it at one-quarter speed. The “setting” control for speed is in the lower right of the YouTube screen.
It’s beyond appalling that Mary would generate such a scheme, using her disabled son as a puppet for her own personal gain. Again, the proof is in the slo-mo of his letter pointing — among other fallacies.
These frauds need to be busted and exposed for what they really are. Here is the YouTube video.
