Supporting Persons Who Do Not Speak as They Read and Write
Language and Communication: A Context for Experiences, Thoughts, Feelings, and Consciousness
My search began out of frustration. Here I was asked to provide consultation on Assistive Technology services. My student was receiving educational services in his home due to complex health issues. He was 18-year-old and had been awarded a speech generating device which he could access with his eyes. His body quieted and he attended while his mother read to him Harry Potter. Using his eyes, he could choose phrases, letters, icons on his display. Muscle control prevented movement of his body due to a mitochondria disorder though his eyes focused on the speech generating device (SGD) occasionally. However when I counted the times he selected messages, he only responded 5 times in an hour, I knew I was missing a part of his communication development! What had my own experiences in communication teach me? What had I observed researching my dissertation?
I saw and heard much more communication in the homes of 7 children who do not speak over 3 days dawn to bedtime that I observed than I had seen at school. I interviewed parents, as their child’s communication partners, who accurately and sensitively interpret smiles, eye movement, facial expressions (frown, subtle looks), voices, even silences with other people, activities that were unique to their bodies and conveyed appropriate meaning. These children were fulfilling communication purposes: engaging socially, sharing their opinions, refining their wants and needs and contributing socially to their family (Beukelman & Light, 2020, Rogers, 1999). I had to wonder how had communication developed so well without speaking?
How could my 18-year-old student accomplish each of these purposes? What did he think and what were his communication opportunities each day? I began asking myself if my task as a speech language pathologist was to embrace not only spoken language but perhaps introduce reading and writing, a visual mode of communicating? What was in his life and participation that included visual, auditory, touch, taste, and smells memory? How could he lessen my frustration and I seek to take away his experience in frustration?
A psychologist friend helpfully recommended that I read 7 ½ Lessons about the Brain (Barrett, 2020). To my amazement Barrett wrote of the continuous interaction within the brain of areas we thought were devoted to different functions of thoughts: the body, reasoning/intellect, and emotions. She claims that communication is not dependent on one area of the brain but on an ongoing communication of an estimated 85 billion neurons unique to every person. Each of her lessons, though strange and unfamiliar, made me change my thinking about communication.
I had to ask myself about how disciplines, outside of my own communication sciences, considered realities of communication, i.e. psychologists, poets, philosophers, religious ministers, persons with disabilities, educators, and speech language pathologists. What did they read, write, and say about thinking in words and deeds?
I had recalled reading Vygotsky’s reality of an “inner speech”, an unspoken but meaningful representation of gestures, voices, actions, and sometimes put into words. I even quoted the poet William James who wrote of greater realities that “Jack” with his emotional and everyday interaction with “Jill” heard the “charms and perfections of his Jill” to which others were “stone cold”. My husband, a Presbyterian minister, had written a book Introduction to Philosophy, that explained Wittgenstein’s “language games”, meanings of words experienced in life (Rogers & Baird). I read of and met Temple Grandin, a person with diagnosis of autism, who wrote of her reality of pictures as “visual thinking”. Stephen Hawking, the astrophysicist whose body was limited because of Amyotrophic Lateral Scerolsis. He manipulated concepts in mind and realized new realities in the universe. How did his reality of communication, depend upon the interaction of his brains, bodies, emotions, thinking, language and experiences? What was more involved in communication? How and when do experiences and thoughts become words and how do we call upon them later? What is consciousness?
My sons directed me to read the Scientific American (February, 2026) on Consciousness and ordered the book, A World Appears: A Journey to Consciousness (2026). Consciousness had become a 2026 topic. I learned of a debate between the experiences and measures of physicalism/scientists/reductionist and those of the reality of abstract thinking of phenomenologists, the poets/idealists. From one perspective, consciousness was measured in size, shape, weight etc. For the other an individual’s experience and emotions within experiences i.e. as trust, love, anger most of which could not be measured. The phenomenologist Pollan discarded Descartes’ frame “I think therefore I am” because experience and feelings mattered as much as our bodies “I feel therefore I am”. The “scientific measurements” yield one type of information and phenomenology another, one which allows us to form consciousness as an interaction in the brain of body, reasoning, and emotions. How do authors now embrace at least 22 different theories of consciousness and view thoughts expressed in arts, in music, in nature, and life experiences.
I spoke with my student and his mother about her child’s having experiences, unspoken thoughts, and a sense of consciousness. She instantly affirmed that his experiences and consciousness were realities. We agreed that his attention and his eyes could express his thoughts, feelings, reasoning from experiences and consciousness. Reading and writing with Augmentative and Alternative communication using a speech generating device would also expand his language development even without speaking.
My understanding changed as much as his. Now when I asked for social greetings, this student chose the display on the speech generating device to select date and time as more appropriate than saying “hi”. He followed this up with “how’s it going?” He was using language a teenager might use in writing a letter. (I look forward to writing more specifics soon.) Sufficient for now I became his communication partner who was able to more accurately and sensitively interpret his communication as his own experience and thoughts. My role was not to “fix” his communication but “listen for and sharing” the realities of our experiences of his thought and consciousness.