The Application and Misapplication of Evidence-based Practice: Part 1 of 3 Episodes on Non-Speakers and Gestalt Language Processing
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Hi, this is Barry, and I'm here to share with you a special trio or triptych of episodes on Uniquely Human, the podcast that's coming up. Why are we doing a special trio of episodes? Well, we're gonna be addressing areas that I've been involved in clinically, as well as in research, as well as my lived experience in relationships with autistic and other neurodivergent individuals and their families. These areas include approaches to support communication in non-speakers, Gestalt language processing issues in autistic individuals and their relationship to Gestalt cognition, and finally, evidence-based practice. In all cases, I've published and presented at conferences going back to my dissertation in the 1970s on echolalia and to the 1980s in the case of approaches to support non-speakers.
This trio of episodes is long overdue as a number of critics have arisen and they've not been challenged in any comprehensive manner, even though their arguments are poorly supported and their recommendations violate the basic tenets of evidence-based practice, both in clinical fields and what we understand about evidence-based practice, even in medicine. Interestingly, there's great overlap in the individuals who are critics. Many people refer to them as naysayers. They've been most involved in challenging not only the findings of the work that I've done with colleagues, but decades of research, clinical practice, and lived experience. By the way, we will identify who they are in the upcoming episodes.
So in these three episodes, the linchpin is evidence-based practice, how critics have misapplied and indeed seem to violate our basic understanding of how evidence-based practice is defined, and accepted by major clinical organizations. They also dismiss any research that is not analytic and experimental, even though such traditions are not as relevant to the most important clinical questions that are being posed. So let's set the stage for you. The first episode, I will be joined by Jess Teixeira, who is a credentialed speech and language pathologist who works on a daily basis with families and young children who are Gestalt language processors. Her work navigates between evidence-based practice, clinical decision-making, and everyday experience with families.
In the second episode, I will be joined by David Kaufer, who is a parent who's navigating these issues in systems and who's raised a son and has experienced firsthand the impact of success of spelling with his non-speaking son. He also has researched and debunked many of the claims of the naysayers in a series of articles on Substack. And finally, in our third episode, we'll be joined by Dr. Jamie Herrocks, who's a brilliant autistic self-advocate, a public school educator, and a Gestalt processor. She's a prolific author who writes extensively about her experiences. Each of these individuals and our guests shows a different but complementary evidence stream, published research, experiential clinical experience,
parent perspectives, and also lived experience. So we will be arguing throughout that evidence-based practice, when practiced fully, includes lived experience as essential evidence and that an over-dependence on narrow quantitative research or absence of narrow quantitative research judges evidence only within traditional boundaries and perpetuates systemic exclusion of marginalized populations. We will argue throughout that the burden of proof must be adjusted when dealing with marginalized communication modalities, different ways of thinking. Or as Dr. Herrick says, why do we need to prove anything to you at all? This is the lived experience. It's my lived experience, and it's the lived experience of many people who are non-speakers and people who know them well.
One other quote that she says, which is so relevant to this, is that knowledge is something you live with. It is not something you extract and display. So we will now move ahead with episode number one on evidence-based practice, and I will be joined by Jess Teixeira.
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Chapters
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