Around the
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Listening at the Other Side
by Michael Moats
I had to think for a few days whether I could write an article like this. I've been with Dave when a listener doesn't give him a chance to respond, speaks to him like he is incapable of understanding, and the other rude and inconsiderate behaviors that many AAC users have experienced. So while I can't write an excuse for what they do, I thought I could at least write a defense. Having a conversation with an AAC user is simply not the same as a conversation with the majority of the world.
Even if a person hasn't taken Communication 101 in college, we know how conversations work: one person is expressing themselves by speaking, and the other is receiving the language by listening. Presuming that the listener is actively listening and not (quoting the movie Pulp Fiction) "waiting to talk," he is absorbing what is being said and formulating questions, comments or responses accordingly. When the speaker is done, the roles are almost instantly reversed and the conversation continues.
This is how the majority of the world has learned to speak to each other. The majority of the world, however, has not dealt with living with a person with a communication disability, let alone an AAC user. When thinking about it, there are two predominant issues that strike me as critical differences between conversations with and then without an AAC user: wait time and non-verbal context cues.
AAC User: Beep...beep...beep...beep...beep...beep...beep...beep...beep...beep...beep...beep... "Can I tell you something?"
Listener: "That's what I thought you were doing!"
People speak at different rates of speed, but from what I've been able to Google the average seems to be about 170 words per minute. While the communication speed of AAC users varies more greatly than non-users, I'll use 17 words per minute because it makes the math easy. (I also think it's a fair average. This of course isn't the speed of the device talking, but the time from the beginning of the composition to the last spoken word.) And as a further bonus for test and verification, I’ve written the first two paragraphs in exactly 170 words and it took me 55 seconds to read it aloud.
Speaking at such a reduced rate and with long periods of silence is quite disconcerting for a typical listener. I have a co-worker who was born to deaf parents and now works as a video relay interpreter. Video relay is the high-speed equivalent of the old TTY machines, but instead of typing messages back and forth through the TTY device, the relay interpreter is speaking with the hearing person over the telephone and using sign language with the deaf person via a videophone. So while this co-worker is a hearing person, she is very much in tune with the Deaf culture and she explains that those in the Deaf culture have a much higher tolerance for conversational silence than those in the speaking/hearing world. As a video interpreter, when the deaf person is pausing and thinking of a response, she needs to placate the hearing person by saying “um… well… hmm… ah….” If she didn’t use those fillers and the hearing person had to sit in silence, they would be asking “What? What’s going on? What’s he saying?” Does that sound familiar?
Another anecdote I can tell is when Christopher Reeve was giving his initial set of interviews shortly after his injury when he was very much dependent on the ventilator to help him breathe. The ventilator forced air into his lungs every 10 seconds or so, and Reeve had to adjust his speech pattern accordingly. Most of the time it takes more than 10 seconds to get a thought across, so he learned to pace his words and his cadence so that it was clear that he was in mid-sentence when the vent pushed air into his lungs, therefore signaling to the listener that they needed to wait for Reeve to finish his thought.
Well this was clear to most people, but not to Larry King. During this particular interview King seemed to ask a follow-up or a totally different question every time there was a pause, even when it was clear to the rest of us watching that Reeve had not yet completed his thought. After the second commercial break, the opening went something like, “So Chris, tell us about how this ventilator apparently stops you from speaking in complete sentences.” Nice save, Larry.
When presented with conversational silence, he likely felt some confusion and a need to push the conversation forward. The term in the media is “dead air” when everybody is waiting for the next statement, and our conversational culture teaches to fill this wait time with further conversation. As the AAC-user is in the process of speaking, I am listening and absorbing the words and formulating a response. When the person is done, I almost immediately respond and might be done with my point within 30 seconds. Now I am ready and I am expecting to be an active listener again, but I can’t. I wait for a word, and then another word. My mind is racing with potential responses, but I don’t really know within 30 seconds what I’m responding to. So then I might begin predicting what the AAC-user will say so I can more quickly express my anticipated response. If I happen to be wrong, my impatience turns to frustration because now I don’t know where the conversation is going and I’m not able to use my typical active listening skills. I need to wait. It’s difficult for me to have to wait for the conversation to move forward because that’s what my conversational culture has taught me.
Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.Hamlet II, ii
Fifteen-odd years ago, I was flipping through the TV channels and I stopped on Sesame Street. Mel Gibson was in his Hamlet outfit and Elmo asked him what he was reading. Gibson said “Words, words, words.” Elmo asked again what he was reading and Gibson said “Words, words, words.” Then Elmo asked again what he was reading and Gibson said… you get the picture. This went on at least a dozen times. So how is this interesting television, let alone something interesting for Sesame Street? Because each through each iteration, Gibson’s non-verbal language changed. He changed his posture, his expression, his cadence, his speed, his pitch and his volume. Each set of non-verbal cues conveyed a specific emotion: happiness, humor, sadness, anger, etc. In a sense, he said a dozen different things during this clip using exactly the same words and there was never any confusion as to what he was saying.
These non-verbal cues, especially those dependent on the voice, are very difficult to convey using an AAC device. Without these cues, the listener needs to expend mental energy deciding how a message is being conveyed. Let’s think of some possible meaning of the phrase “I said that.” It could be “Oh yeah, remember I said that the other day?” Or it could be “I said that already, and if you were listening then you would have remembered!” The first is a gentle reminder and the other is an angry exclamation, but you can’t know which one is meant with the three simple words, “I said that.” So now the listener needs to consider the context and tone of the conversation because the response to the gentle question is very different than the response to the angry one.
I looked up a study where they forced subjects to interpret non-verbal communication, and it found those subjects that were required to interpret a greater number of non-verbal cues experienced greater mental fatigue. This wasn’t an AAC study but I think the application to this field is the same. There is little non-verbal interpretation needed for either the gentle reminder or the angry question, but the listener does need to make some decisions before responding to the simple “I said that.” Because of the lack of non-verbal cues, a person having a conversation with an AAC-user needs to make more of these types of decisions than they would with a non-AAC-user, and therefore will experience greater fatigue over time.
Adapting to conversational silence and managing my responses to the lack of non-verbal cues are two behaviors that I’ve needed to learn. And I’ve had my share of growing pains, like the guy at camp who I was sure was getting nothing out of the experience because he couldn’t even give us a yes or no, only to learn later that dropping his jaw was his way of saying yes. I was also initially unsure of how to react to children who have autism until I heard of a woman who spoke about her troubles and experiences as a non-verbal autistic child. The person off the street may initially be like Larry King – impatient, unsure, and uncomfortable with a markedly different communication style. I hope I’ve been able to use my experiences and understanding to give people like Larry at least a modest defense.
About the Author: Michael has been working with people who have disabilities for over twenty years, and is currently the Assistive Technology Manager at Linking Employment, Abilities and Potential (LEAP). Michael specializes in computer access for children and adults who have disabilities and has worked with a variety of keyboards, trackballs, and adaptive software like screen readers, word prediction, and speech recognition. Michael has a background in education and has given presentations at various workshops to professionals, college students, schoolteachers, and students.
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