Ky Dickens
speaker
1,243 appearances
7 recordings
3 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 1 Apr
Ky Dickens’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Yeah, using your body. And the thing I think why spelling has been so – there's such a stigma around spelling. And I feel so bad for individuals using spelling because they're in there and they are communicating. But people have said, oh, but you need the support so these can't be your words, right? Like for a spelling partner, let's say – You have to kind of learn to be a communication partner.
You have to learn to really understand like the mind-body disconnect and what's going on with the non-speaker in front of you. And sometimes their hand gets lost in space. So it's good to like pull the board away and like put it back in again. Or sometimes you have to cue them, like, go for it. Okay, get that letter. Because that will help with their motor planning, right? Right.
So those supports are critical. But people will look at those supports and say, oh, well, that must mean they're not typing independently. But to me, that's as wild as saying, oh, you need reading glasses? You can't read. No, that's a support to help you read. You can still read if you're reading classes. And that's how I think of the communication partner.
No.
No. And I think one of the things... But the stigma, I think, that really started for spelling was facilitated communication. Actually, this is like the first thing you asked. We're going full circle. So for a long time, there was just no hope of getting people who weren't verbal, non-speakers out. There just wasn't. And then all of a sudden, facilitated communication came along.
And it was developed, I think, in Australia, I think. But this was ideas of, you know, put some pressure on someone's wrist so they can really feel where they're at in space, right? Like, they'll be able to spell. And it was a miracle. I mean, it was all over the news. This was great.
And some of the first parents that were using facilitated communication started reporting there's telepathy involved. And this was at Syracuse University in the 90s. Syracuse knew about this and started kind of burying that information. And there was a lot of, like, kind of... And you'll be let go if you're teaching this and you're talking about this. So there was kind of big cover up.
So this was new. This is not new that this was going on. But then there were some claims of sexual assault. There's awful things that happened where what was being claimed didn't happen. And so people started blaming facilitated communication. Oh, well, maybe they're pushing their hand or doing this or doing that.
And I think for a lot of people who train in facilitated communication, you're using your hand to put pressure so the individual knows where the body is in space, but you're not pushing their hand. But there probably are some cases where that had happened. Well, anyway, so then it got kind of just stigmatized, right? It's pseudoscience. This is not –
So spelling evolved into these forms where it was like, no touch, do not touch. And so many of those spelling groups now are helping individuals. And the big tenet of this is you cannot touch them. And that's where spelling's at now, is that you learn to communicate and there's no touch involved.
I'm one of these people that thinks whatever the individual needs to help them communicate, it's okay. If you need a little touch so you know where your arm is, or sometimes it helps you go faster if there's a little push, I think go for it. Help these individuals get out there.
Yeah, and it was really on set sometimes because every once in a while, some parents hold the board and hold it there for their child. And we would use these dry erase markers on the screen to be like, is the board moving? And it wasn't.
Oh, look at this.
Wow. I have never heard of that.
That'd be pretty wild. That'd be pretty wild.
I mean, I can only comment on the people I've met, but I think of all the people that we're talking to a lot, you know, for the project and now the film. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely more than one. I mean, at least I know 15 or 20 who can who seem to know various language they haven't been taught.
Yeah. And one of the earlier children that Dr. Powell was studying, this boy knew really kind of odd languages like Russian and Japanese. And I think he was five or six and could just speak in different languages and knew different languages. It's absolutely remarkable.
I mean, this is the thing, right? There hasn't been a lot of research around this phenomenon. And I think I can only go again off of what spellers have said. I mean, one thing is that they say that there's a neurology behind language, right? The current, the most baseline language is not with words. Words are these 3D objects that we attach these thoughts and feelings to.
And that is the thing that they can understand, which makes sense. That would be what telepathy is, right? If you're not using words.
Right.
Showing 921–940 of 1,243 · page 47 of 63
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