Association for Behavior Analysis International

Soma Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) is a methodology that purports to build communication and academic skills in learners with autism and other diagnoses using intensive verbal, auditory, visual, and tactile prompts. Use of RPM is often accompanied by extraordinary claims that learners exhibited exceptional skill levels, and even genius-like talents, even though most had shown no signs of such skills before RPM was used and no scientific research supports those claims. This panel discussion will address the similarities between Rapid Prompting Method and Facilitated Communication (FC) and threats that both represent to the effective implementation of applied behavior analysis interventions (for example, when false communications produced via RPM or FC replace actual, independent communication, or those methods supplant proven intervention methods). Objective procedures for testing the authorship of messages produced via RPM or FC and the ethical and legal challenges they pose for ABA practitioners and school districts will also be discussed.

All ABA practitioners and educational professionals: BCBAs, BCaBA, School Psychologists