Northeastern professor Ralph Schlosser has dedicated his career to removing communication barriers faced by minimally verbal autistic children.
When he started working at Northeastern 25 years ago, that meant enlisting the help of a precise, dedicated, specialized and somewhat stigmatized tech.
More recently, Schlosser has been a leader in using basic mobile technologies, such as iPads and animations, to enable children with severe communication problems to do everything from ask for a glass of water to deliver a lecture for a school subject.
“The field has shifted to mainstream consumer-level technologies such as the iPad, smart speakers and smartwatches. It helps them communicate better and it's not stigmatizing because you and I might as well be wearing a watch,” says Schlosser.
“Approximately 30% of autistic children have little or no functional speech and benefit from augmentative and alternative communication strategies and devices. This is the population I work with,” he says.
Breaking new ground
Schlosser's scientific research and documented progress in the field led to him being awarded the highest honors by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association last winter.
Rajinder Koul, who chairs the speech, language and hearing sciences department at the University of Texas at Austin, says Schlosser's contributions “have strengthened and changed the course of the profession.”
Repurposing mainstream mobile technologies to promote language and communication “has broken new ground in providing evidence-based solutions to improve communication for people with little or no functional speech,” says Koul.
“This has potentially changed the lives of people with developmental disabilities,” says Koul.
Unexpected improvement in speech
Communication devices are adapted and personalized to children's abilities.
Children who can read are given devices with the conventional spelling system of the language or text.
“For other kids who aren't at that level in terms of literacy, we use graphic symbols, icons or pictures,” says Schlosser. “We use whatever is appropriate for the child.”
The focus of communication intervention varies depending on the child and where they are in their progress toward communication, she says.
Communication can range from basic statements like “I'm hungry” or “I'm thirsty” to more complex interactions like asking questions and greeting people.
Some people fear that using alternative modes of communication meant that young people would “give away” the speech, he says.
“But that's not the case,” says Schlosser.
“We're actually seeing improvements in speech. And that was a surprise to some of us.”
“The important thing is that we always talk together using these modes,” says Schlosser. “We see communication as multimodal.”
Disclosure of thoughts and feelings
Closing the communication gap with technology has helped reveal the thoughts and feelings of non-verbal people in a way that wasn't possible before, Schlosser says.
“They can show what they think, and we get to know the authentic person behind the person using the system.”
Schlosser says that one of the most amazing things is being able to see a person who is considered minimally verbal “be spontaneous and respond on the fly.”
Schlosser, who is a professor of communication sciences and disorders at Northeastern's Bouvé College of Health Sciences, is collaborating on the research with clinicians at Boston Children's Hospital's Autistic Language Program, which he says sees about 1,500 autistic children a year.
He is also the founding editor of a journal called Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, which evaluates already published research in order to provide clinicians with assistance in implementing evidence-based practice.
Koul says the journal is also an example of the work Schlosser has done to debunk pseudoscientific interventions in the field.
An example of pseudoscience is when people helping non-speaking people to use communication devices unknowingly guide their responses and basically create their responses instead of having the autistic person “talk” on their own.
“We don't hear the child's voice,” says Schlosser.
“The moderators are talking. And that's not what we want on the field. We want independent communication.”
“It's very applied work. It's very clinical,” Schlosser says of his research. “And I also find it very rewarding.”
Cynthia McCormick Hibbert is a reporter for Northeastern Global News. Email her at c.hibbert@northeastern.edu or connect with her on Twitter @HibbertCynthia.
