CCN Alphabet: Language of Control

To get this series going again, I have decided to jump around the alphabet instead of follow alphabetical order. I wanted to share that in case anyone is wondering what happened to the letters F through K. They will come. As I am completing posts, I am linking them in the original post in the series which can be found by clicking here.

The idea for this topic comes from the book Enhancing Communication for Individuals with Autism: A Guide to the Visual Immersion System by Howard C. Shane, Emily Laubscher, Raif W. Schlosser, Holly L. Fadie, James F. Sorce, Jennifer S. Abramson, Suzanne Flynn, and Kara Corley. The information on the Language of Control and the language functions that reflect the Language of Control comes from this book and the thoughts and ideas are a combination of some of the thoughts and ideas from this book as well as ideas from other sources and my experience. I also wanted to think through how to use core boards or the individual's core based language system with some of these ideas.

Often we tend toward using visual supports from a "behaviour management" perspective. It's important to not get too caught up in this as it can serve to inhibit spontaneous communication. Rather, but we should reframe this and look at visuals and language supports from a self-advocacy and opportunity for expressive and receptive language growth lens.

As outlined in the book mentioned above, the Language of Control is related to "control functions" that allow the individual to influence his or her surroundings by inspiring others to act. These functions are (1) protesting and refusal, (2) organization and transitions, (3) requesting, and (4) directives. These functions are controlled based rather than conversational in nature because their goal is to influence the behaviour of another rather than to initiate a conversation exchange.

Protesting and Refusal: According to this book, protest is a "behaviour that expresses objection or disapproval of an activity, event or person", while refusal is a "behaviour that expresses rejection of an object, activity, or event suggested or initiated by another person." Most children have a non-symbolic way of communicating protesting and refusal so the idea is to work toward a more symbolic (and often adaptive) way of protesting or refusing.

The language of protest and refusal is rooted in core words. The core words that are associated with protesting and refusal include "all done" or "finished", "stop", "no", "more", "help". "Take a break" is an important phrase that should be taught as well.

When working with students around the language of protesting and refusal we should (1) explicitly teach the words, (2) model the use of the words. and (3) ensure that the words are always easily available to the individual.

When we teach core vocabulary we need to do it "during meaningful interactions throughout the school day" (Project Core Website). At 12:15 of this Dynamic Learning Maps PD video there is a great demonstration around directly teaching core words to a group of students. I will be posting a separate post soon with some ideas around strategies for teaching the words included in the language of control. Modeling the use of the words is related to reading the individual's cues and modeling the language around it. Example: Modeling the capitalized words without expectation that the student will say them: "It looks like you DON'T LIKE that and that you are ALL DONE." Ensuring the words are easily available to the students means having their system there but it might also mean having these specific visuals available in different ways (i.e. having them tapped down to a work space or included right on a visual schedule).

Although protesting and refusal are primarily about expressive language, it is also important to be aware of the times when one cannot immediately honor an individual's protest or refusal as being able to cope with this requires receptive language skills. Visual supports such as first-then displays, timers and countdowns, a "surprise" visual, and social stories can be used to facilitate receptive language. To be effective, there may need to be some explicit teaching around these. Ideas related to that specific teaching will be included in the blog post mentioned above.

Organization and Transitions: This book defines organization as "the act of arranging elements into an orderly, functional structured whole" and transition as "the process of changing from one state, stage, activity or environment to another." Memory, attention, time management, problem solving, initiating, sequencing and prioritizing are all skills that are important to organization. Developing these skills cannot be done without also developing the receptive language understanding that is necessary for the skills. The visual supports that we put in place for the underlying skills can also serve as an opportunity to work on language development.

Specific things we should be thinking about when teaching organization and transitions includes completing multi-step directions, sorting and organizing materials, following a schedule, understanding and using measures of time, moving from a preferred activity to a non-preferred activity or vice versa, dealing with changes in familiar routines, dealing with a delay in receiving an anticipated item or activity and tolerating unexpected events.

Again, we need to think about the language that is important and ensure that we are teaching, modeling and making symbols available. We should consider (1) prepositional words like "in", "on", "away", "up", and (2) time-related words like "first", "then", "later", "wait"...etc., The action and descriptive words outlined in directives section below overlap in to the area of following schedules, sorting and organizing.

There are a lot of visual tools that can be used to support receptive understanding in this area. We need to be cautious that our primary goal with these tools is not that of compliance as that can have va very negative impact on language and communication growth.  These tools will be furthered explained in another post but they include things like visual schedules (including learner constructed schedules), first-then visuals, countdown boards, task or activity schedules, social stories, video modeling, and symbols like "surprise" or "wait".

Requesting: Requesting is defined as "expressing a desire for objects, activities, people, affection, attention, recurrence, assistance, information and/or clarification."

When thinking about requesting, we need to be cautious around believing that there is language understanding if an individual is using a scripted phrase like what would be used in PECs. A scripted phrase is no more meaningful than a single work and doesn't represent generative language. As this book points out, PECs focuses primarily on requesting but there is little opportunity for language development as it consists of mostly nouns, it uses carrier phrases rather than generative word-by-word language, and the individual words represented by the symbols are not actually taught.

As we expand requesting skills, it is important to also focus on descriptive language as having descriptive language allows an individual to request things that may not be represented in their system or are not directly in sight. This doesn't mean we make the individual describe everything they are requesting, but rather that we embed descriptive approaches naturally so that the individual is coming to an understanding of these words through seeing them modeled and used in natural contexts.

Directives: Directives is "explicit instructional language used to control the behaviour of another." Underlying a directive is an implicit understanding that a specific order or command will be carried out. In regards to the "language of control" we are looking at the ability of the individual to expressively give others directives. This does involve receptively understanding the language of directives.

This book outlines the most common directives as being either control based (sit down, quiet, no running), routine-based (get, open, put away, stand up), instructional (cut, circle, point), or play-based (roll, throw, blow, pop). There are many opportunities for teaching vocabulary and generative language (putting words together to create meaning) within directives. Understanding and using verbs, prepositions and descriptors is particularly important. Many of the most important words are included in core language lists. It's also important to recognize that not following directions may be related to receptive language (understanding of what these words mean as individual words and in combination with other words). Not following directions may also be related to things like attention, memory, or inability to organize multiple steps. or just being too overwhelmed/stressed in the moment to be able to follow the direction. When an individual has difficulty with following directions we need to step back and think about weather we are properly scaffolding.

This book offers suggestions around teaching directives by moving from video modeling of the directive to a static picture from the video to incorporating symbols and putting them together to represent the directive. As I read through it, I was thinking of some ways to modify it and embed it with teaching of core words and/or Predictable Chart Writing.

Another suggestion they offer related to play is to create topic displays that allow the user to manipulate symbols in to phrases or sentences. I could see the value in this but as I read through it I also thought about the need to move it over to modeling on a language system so that the words that were being used didn't just disappear when the activity was done. This is also got me thinking about incorporating the idea in teaching core words and/or Predictable Chart Writing.

You can advance these topic displays from simple statements to more advanced by adding in different elements. If used, they recommend using them around highly motivating activities. I'm including pictures of how a "Bubbles" topic display could be expanded over time. Note that there is a line on the side included to "comment" on the activity. As well, these displays can include a "sentence strip" at the top that is either color coded or not in which the symbols and be moved up to create a phrase or a sentence.

Final Thoughts: The communicative functions outlined here are far from the only communicative functions that individuals should be learning but they are important ones to learn in the middle of learning others. As mentioned at the beginning these ones are very restricted in regards to learning conversational skills. 

Ultimately, being explicit about teaching students the language of control positions them to active agents in their lives. It is also important and important step in social/emotional development that positions individuals to engage in organizing and problem solving as if one is unable to consistently exercise control over their own life they will become passive and helpless and are at an even greater risk for abuse.