Videos of nonspeaking autistic people using rapid prompting method usually show a fixed, uniform tapping with their index finger – as though tapping to a music beat.
This alone makes the claims about RPM very difficult to believe – claims that these individuals have produced highly literate paragraphs of expression by simply poking a finger on a plastic letter board.
Skeptics of RPM classically point out that the user hardly looks at the letter board.
Another source of suspicion is that the videos, when slowed down, show the finger hitting spaces between letters, as well as just a succession of random letters.
However, there’s yet another element that ranks high for the fraudulent nature of RPM: the even cadence of the tapping.
Before you pass this steady tempo off as the inevitable product of long-term use of a letter board, there are a few things to consider.
The Steady Cadence
First, I’m talking about tapping that’s done with a marked steady beat – making it appear more like stimming than spelling out sentences.
Or, if stimming isn’t quite the right comparison, we can say the tapping appears to be just too unvarying to be someone actually spelling.
It looks as though it’s done without the user knowing what they’re doing other than following a command to randomly tap the board at the facilitator’s prompt.
If you were to use a letter board to communicate, due to a loss of speech or just to experiment, you absolutely would not be tapping with a noticeably steady beat. No way.
You can prove this right now by looking at your laptop or computer keyboard. Use just your index finger to spell out a narration of what it was like growing up in your particular town.
Go ahead, touch the keys without actually typing to simulate a flat smooth letter board.
You will NOT be able to do this with a steady rhythm. As someone who can “touch type” at a fast speed, I can’t even do this at a fixed rhythm.
In fact, listen to someone touch typing. Even fast touch typing still comes in with an uneven rhythm; it’s not uniform, no matter how accurate, how fast or how experienced that person is at typing by feel.
I touch type 80 wpm, been doing it for decades, and still, it’s impossible to yield an even cadence.
So the idea that a nonverbal person with autism could execute an even-rhythm tapping of sentences is just absolutely not believable.
Tapping and Jabbing vs. Pointing
Second, in videos the finger is sometimes shown tapping, jabbing or poking rather than pointing. There’s a difference.
Seems to me that if someone can spell out sentences, they’d point rather than jab. Seems that jabbing or tapping would arise from a random nature by an illiterate person to appease the facilitator.
If a nonverbal adult has the cognitive level of a preschooler, along with their autism, they can still very much learn to follow a prompt to tap at a board that, to them, is meaningless, since they’re illiterate.
But they certainly understand the concept of obedience or tapping this thing she’s holding because it makes her happy. They may even eventually come to enjoy the tapping as a form of stimming or self-regulating movement.
If you were expressing yourself via an index finger on a laminated letter board, you’d be pointing, not jabbing.
There’ve been several nonverbal autistic adults featured in the media with parents claiming that they can point out all the flowery narrative that the parent allegedly reads aloud as the user taps.
They, as well as supporters of RPM, might attribute the jabbing to apraxia or dyspraxia: neurological motor conditions that prevent finer motor control. But pointing doesn’t require a whole lot of fine neuromotor control. This isn’t threading a needle.
That they often jab or poke at the letters should remain suspicious for fraudulent claims that they can spell out complex narrative.
Of Important Note
This article applies to those parents who claim that their nonspeaking child can produce that sophisticated narrative that you’ve seen in the “nonverbal autistic man finally has a voice” stories.
This post does not pertain to those who truly can spell out words to express their needs or feelings, but in a more believable, simpler way.
When an individual must rely on pointing to one letter at a time, they will naturally take shortcuts to say what they want, as this is a tedious form of communication.
When asked what their hobbies are, the authentic spellers are likely to say “Pokemon leggos my dog” rather than a mini-dissertation using advanced syntax. Come on.
