And Cynthia, welcome to the Complex Communication Needs webinar series from Alberta. My name's Kathy Howry and I'm really happy to see that we have lots of people on this afternoon, which I'm sure will be a very informative and practical session for everyone. So Dr. Cynthia Press, as she's put out here is from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. I've been a bit of a follower of her work for a while. We met in person a couple of Isaacs ago, and I have been really, really happy that she agreed to be with us here this afternoon to talk about some of her work and really focusing on some of our youngest and earliest communicators. So, Cynthia, with that in mind, I'm gonna let you take over. I'm gonna mute myself, but I will be following along and making sure that if other people come in that they're muted. And also, if people do have questions, if you could put them in the chat, I will try and keep track of the chat. Cynthia, you won't need to worry about that at all. Okay? All right, sounds good. Thank you. The next thing that Kathy is going to put this handout up on the website as soon as the transcript is there. So you will have a copy of this. So I'm just looking to provide you some useful strategies at this point. I just put up a disclosure. I do have some assessments and some interventions that I've developed. None of these are particularly proprietary for me, so I have no particular conflict of interest in this information. Let's start with who is an early communicator because that's not entirely a young person. This could be children or adults who are not yet intentional communicators. And I've worked with many adults who are still working on strategies to use their gestures of deliberately conveying information. These could be adults or children who rely on gestures or partners for most of their messages. So these could include our children with autism who are relying on us to ask the right question for their messages to be interpretable. Here comes the time. These could be children or adults who are symbolic sometimes, but only under certain circumstances. And again, these could include our children with autism. And then these also can include children and adults who can speak sometimes, but may need reminders, may need some structure, may need some input, and that also children or adults who are missing the point of some of the more complex forms of communication. And again, these can include our children with autism. Just wanted to make a note that these can include children and adults who are across the disability span, as well as these can include adults who have a quiet disorder who have returns to being a communicator. It sounds like we still need at least one person to be a communicator on their own, and the lower left one, we've got some turbulence going here. So that will help us all up. On the, you all talked about this being a complex communication needs network. I wanted to then further define what formal AAC is, and I used the word form for an hour, because too many of us presume that AAC involves the voice output device, the sign. Those are what I'm considering formal AAC, meaning it is symbolic uses of a symbolic device or system. That's only one subset of what AAC is. That when you look at the Isaac definition, AAC includes all the ways of communicating, including gestures, including partner behaviors, including natural behavior of individuals, and that includes more multimodal strategies. Even people who rely on formal AAC will still use some of those multimodal techniques as part of their own relationships. My definition of AAC is anything that holds communication when traditional methods are not sufficient for AAC. So that means AAC can start at birth, and it doesn't require being symbolic or developing any prerequisites for AAC regardless of what age you are, so that there's no limitations to who can rely on AAC. It's just different uses of AAC at different ages or different skill levels may make a difference. So we can always start with partner recognition of behaviors at any point, and this tool that I'm gonna talk about today are particularly relevant for that partner recognition of those skills. Just a reminder, we've said that gesture and behaviors are part of multimodal AAC for anybody at any skill range, regardless of how symbolic you are. This can include postures, voice, body shift, partner responses, all of these kinds of behaviors, and everybody has a continuum of how and when they use these natural behaviors as a principle of symbolic AAC. So it still counts as AAC intervention if we come into an assessment or if we do intervention activities and we're addressing these partner-based or gestural strategies. It's still AAC if that individual would not be effective at using their communication strategies if these were not incorporated in their interventions. If you consider yourself an AAC specialist, you don't have to bring a thing to be doing AAC. Let's walk through some of the early, the breakdowns of different forms of early communication and again, all of us produce these behaviors sometimes, however symbolic we are as communicators. So one of the earliest forms of communication is spontaneous communication. So Logan, the grandchild that we just saw recently, he had some forms of spontaneous communication from birth. He would cry, he would fuss, he would squirm. That's what we traditionally consider some spontaneous communication. However, everybody produces these. My students, when it's about time to finish up class, they are squirming in their seats. If I ask a question, they all look down all of a sudden, that's spontaneous communication as well that they are communicating, even not deliberately, that they don't wanna get called on for that question. So all of us produce spontaneous communication for some reason. We've got object directed communication, which means I'm gonna reach for something that I want or I'm going to reach towards you as an object. This could include a device.  So we've got the Big Mac switch, let's say here. I can reach towards this switch and hit it just because I want to hear the click or because I want to hear the noise that it makes. It doesn't necessarily mean that I know that this is a communication device. It just means that I am using it as an object, just any other object. We can, and again, all of us produce some object directed behaviors at some times. There's a difference, however, this is what we consider intentional behaviors. I do this because I want it. I reach for my drink because I want the drink. Just because I reach for the drink doesn't necessarily mean, however, that I know that you are going to give me this drink. Being partner directed is adding additional complexity to those object directed behaviors.  Now I am person directed or intentional in my communication. And just because I'm intentional in some aspects of my communication doesn't mean that I'm intentional in all of my aspects of communication. That still can vary a lot. This could include formal AAC directed towards a person. So I can take a picture symbol and give it to you. I don't know what it does. I just know that I'm supposed to do something towards you and it's supposed to make you do something. So it still could be a form of just intentional communication and we need to be cautious in how we interpret our children and adults' uses of our formal AAC.  As we look at symbolic communication, we don't just have a magical understanding that all of a sudden we become a symbolic communicator and now all symbols around us make sense. Any given symbol may have a process in which I learn what it means and how to use it. For instance, every speaker child has an initial way of using symbolic communication that's just referential. I know it means something, but I don't know what it means. For instance, you ask a child, where's your nose? They go, da, what's this? Da, where's mama? Da, what's your name? Da, I know that da means something, but I don't know what it means. So similarly, our kids who rely on AAC may give you this picture symbol and regardless of what the picture symbol looks like, I just know that good things are supposed to happen when I give you this thing. I have no idea what it means. I just have the expectation it's supposed to be meaningful or if I hit my voice output device and I'm gonna watch you expectantly that something's supposed to happen, but I don't know what it means. This is a referential use of symbols and it's important, first of all, to know that this is a natural process in becoming more symbolic at using this form of communication. Secondly, that it's situation dependent. Some situations I may know that this means Thomas the Tank Engine and in some situations I just know it means something good. So just because I can use this form of communication or this form of communication systematically in some circumstances, doesn't mean I can use it in other circumstances. Also, just because you can understand this message symbolically, doesn't mean that I understand this message symbolically. This can include speech. So I might say, ball, cupcake, cookie, more, in, that, with, and I don't know what any of these phrases mean. I just know they're supposed to be meaningful or kids with autism might walk up to the refrigerator and go and say all kinds of signs and not know what any of them mean and I just know they're supposed to be meaningful. It's very important not to overinterpret those behaviors that says this child representationally understands what they mean in the same way that we do. So they might just be referential and essentially another form of partner directed communication. As kids start to get an idea of partner directed communication or excuse me, more symbolic communication, I might have a differential use of symbols, which means this picture symbol might mean something that I like and these yellow ones are things that I don't like. I'm not exactly sure, but I know I wanna pick the white ones and not the yellow ones. Or maybe I know that this gets me a thing and this gets me an action. So I might choose between two different symbols, but I might not be very systematic. Ashley, we do need you to mute if you can. Thank you. So we don't know which of those two things that we're gonna pick actually has an impact on what we're doing. So that still is differential. When we're giving children a choice between objects and actions or things that I like and things that I don't like, we're trying to build that sense of differential understanding of symbols on the way to being representational, which means I touch this picture symbol and it gets me Diet Coke. It doesn't get me regular Coke. It doesn't get me seven up and it sure doesn't get me tickle. I know exactly what it gets me. So none of these are stages that children are at. Everybody who is a communicator uses all of these. And as we're collecting an inventory of all the different ways the children communicate, we need to reflect all of these types of communication that they're using. So if we have a child who's mostly using representational symbolic communication for most of their message, let's say they're a speaking product, they still may have some message but they can't access what it is that they want to communicate. So there might be ways of saying I'm confused that I convey with my spontaneous behaviors. I don't have the words that I can find to say I'm confused but I have other ways of conveying that information. So we need to reflect which messages I'm relying on a simpler form of communication for even if I'm both symbolic and a verbal communicator. So this tool is important for anybody at any level of communication but particularly important for our earliest communicators. So as we're thinking about those early forms of communication, as soon as we introduce formal AAC, we are making this process of communicating with spontaneous communication or symbolic communication or intentional communication harder using any number of these possible elements that make that communication harder. For instance, as soon as we introduce a formal tool of communication, let's say a picture symbol, we are automatically asking the child to look for an external thing to make it communication. So if I want you to tickle me, I'm just going to reach for you and I'm going to say tickle. That's going to be a form of intentional communication. Now you present to me this picture device, picture symbol and now I have to turn from you and this interaction down to this picture symbol and find it and think that this picture symbol means you. This is counterintuitive. The more we make our children look for the tool that is going to be their communication, the harder we are making that interaction. So already just finding the device that I need to communicate with is already a hard thing that we're adding to the representational symbolicness of the AAC in general. When we change from I want you to tickle me to pushing the picture symbol with a voice output device under it, we are automatically adding about four hard things to that communication interaction. Even if I know how to say tickle, well, yes, that's the language that's added to the intentional communication but we're also adding the visual representation of tickle here. We're adding the voice output and I now have to decide if the voice output matches the picture symbol, matches my language, which matches my intent and I have to find this and use it. So as soon as we work from tickle to push your switch, I want you to do tickle. We've automatically added four hard things to that child's communication and that starts to explain why when we introduce AAC it makes it sometimes we can hit a wall where a child can use some symbols or they can use their voice output but as soon as we add this device or symbol onto their early interaction, we're having them not be successful. So what we need to do in our interventions is to add only one of these hard things at a time. So sometimes we need to simply experience giving picture symbols just for the heck of it. Just when these external symbols are worth paying attention to. We're going to put those voice output devices right at the face of the person who we want to have tickle us so that when I reach and go tickle, you can help me hit that picture symbol and then I can learn, wow, this switch does something meaningful for me. It's just worth paying attention to it or listen to the voice output just to enjoy listening to the voice output and later on start to cumulatively add these hard things into that communication interaction. So when you hit the wall in terms of introducing AAC, see if you can only introduce one of these hard things at a time and then scaffold the rest of them for the child. And again, this is tool that I'm talking about today, maybe a way to help you break apart exactly how many hard things are we adding to the natural behavior that the child has already produced. Just food for thought. So ways that you can introduce formal AAC in a simpler way for children. It can simply be an advice, something worth looking. So if I wanted to introduce voice output just for the sake of knowing that hitting switches is interesting. Maybe I'm going to put your mother's voice recorded on here, your father's voice and I'm going to learn that just hitting that switch as a simple intentional communication behavior is interesting just in and of itself. So it's worth hunting for this external device just to hear the voice output. And that's already exploring AAC as a meaningful thing over and above, right at my level of complexity that I'm interacting with objects. It also AAC, formal AAC can be a means to get input from us about language. So if I'm trying to figure out which of two switches that I hit, well, maybe I can push them and I can hear the voice output or hear the language and start to help myself figure out which of these two differential symbols I wanna use. Can be a way to practice words. So if you have a child who is symbolic, verbal communicator in many circumstances but I don't know what word to say to get help maybe I can have a switch that I can hit that says help and maybe I can practice the words of saying help so that now I can find those words more easily myself or use my voice output device to get them. They also can be reminders of what to say even if I'm a verbal communicator I still might need those visual reference of all those different picture symbols that I can communicate. So that's background information around the context for which we're going to be talking about this communication signal in the joy. Now there are people that call these gesture dictionaries. It can be a synonymous term. I tend to not like the gesture dictionary first of all because dictionary presumes that we're being comprehensive and sometimes we're not we just don't know what all the signals we have that we can't recognize. Also gesture tends to mean only hand-armed signals to us whereas communication signals are anything that we recognize from that child or adult that's meaningful to us whether or not that child intended to produce that behavior whether or not it was a hand-armed behavior. So for any early communicator we simply have to have this inventory together so that all of us that are interacting with that child have a common way for understanding the behaviors that they're producing. We have an inventory of the possible ways that we have for that child that we can recognize that child conveying an intent so that if we're looking for a way for the child to expand their commenting, let's say we can look at their inventory and say well what's the closest behavior that they have to a comment even if it's not a comment it maybe it's a eyebrow raise when they see something that they're interested in maybe that's their comment and that's as close as they get to a comment. These are great times. So these don't have to be intentional behaviors they don't have to be intentional communication they may be very subtle they may be the absence of a behavior maybe the way that I show I'm interested in the behavior is that I don't or an activity is I don't get up and walk away that's the absence of behavior and that's still a signal. So we need all of these ways to capture what it is our children and adults are doing. In order to get a communication signal inventory it's also important to notice when a child produces that behavior. For instance, let's take our formal AAC maybe the child only pushes their switch when we hold the switch out to them and now they know they're supposed to hit it but if that switch is down on their table or they have to go hunt for it on another surface maybe now that's not a when when I can use that system. So it's important to know that I pushed my pictures my voice output switch when someone holds it out to me and that's the only when in which I see that behavior that tells us a lot about why they're not using their AAC device in some other context because they're relying on the when of us presenting that or presenting their picture symbol or giving them two choices or labeling those. So the when of when someone produces a behavior is important to specify really for every single one of the behaviors on our signal inventory. We need to know when they produce it if it's prompted or if it's spontaneous if there are certain partner behaviors or environmental circumstances that trigger that behavior then we know we want to elicit those behaviors using those same triggering events when we're doing intervention. So we're gonna build our intervention out of this communication signal inventory for most of our early communicators. So we're gonna plan when we see this kind of behavior that's an opportunity to move forward in becoming more intentional or more symbolic. When we see this behavior we want to encourage this behavior to occur more often and we're gonna plan different responses to those early communication behaviors so that we can see it more often. When we see this behavior we wanna do less so that the child can focus on what it is they're considering doing. If we find we've done a communication signal inventory and we've only got three behaviors on our inventory there are two main possible reasons for that. One is we haven't broken apart the when of that behavior very well. So we may have looks and reaches and makes a sound. Well looks when, looks when someone holds something out looks when someone comes in the door looks when a noise happens in our environment the looks plus the when become 10 possibly different signals from an individual. So we need to add the when. The other reason why we may not be getting many behaviors on our inventory is that we may really not have very interesting activities. Maybe we've got the child who simply sits in the back of the classroom and smiles because no real opportunities for communication have happened. So maybe we need to spend a lot more time trying out different activities to see what contempt that child to want to convey a message so that we then can see the child showing a wider breadth of interactions. So that's something to consider all of my students regardless of which class they're in produce a communication signal inventory a CSI for all the individuals they're working with. And I say there's a minimum of 25 signals you must have in my classes for regardless of how skilled your communicator is. So that's for me a bare minimum that everybody has at least 25 different combinations of behaviors that we recognize even from very, very early communicators who have very limited motor control or other range of behaviors. So here's an example of a signal inventory. I've shortened these a lot. You should be shrinking them and having more words. I've skipped some important words like a person and his object. And you should be adding more in here but I shrank the language and shrank the number of items just to fit them on the PowerPoint. So we have here a real child that I'd work with where the child watches somebody intently when that person acts on an object. Almost every behavior that anybody produces has more than one possible meaning. Don't have a one to one relationship between exactly what they said and exactly what it means. Even when I say a word, it doesn't mean only one thing. I could go ball and maybe saying that word means I want it, I'm interested in it, I'm confused about it or I just like saying that word to hear myself talk. There could be multiple meanings. So this one when she watches a person might mean she's interested, might mean she wants something, might mean she wants picked up, probably four or five other possible meanings. And so here is when we plan our response. This is not the response that currently happens in their world so much as what we want to do to plan an intervention therapeutically for that child or adult. Here's a very idiosyncratic one for this child.  And that's how her mother knew to come in when she was awake and this is something she did on her own. So part of the signal would say in the morning and on her own. So this signals that she's awake and maybe also signals that she's getting her voice ready to use it. There would be other possible meanings. So here is a planned response and we'll talk through those planned responses in just a minute. Now we've got another behavior that the child produces on their own combining two different kinds of movements.  Mom had interpreted that as I want a drink. Or maybe I'm just producing this because I see you and I know every time I do this, you come over and you interact with me. So maybe it's now become a more generalized behavior to get attention.  Maybe it means a lot of different things. So maybe give her a drink but also give her an opportunity to do something else to get your attention. And this child said ah and maybe spits things out. If she's interacting with them, maybe a pacifier. It could mean she's hungry, but again, maybe she's learned this as a social routine and there are various reasons she produces this behavior. So that's an example of a CSI. We're gonna walk through really for the rest of the session here. How do we create these types of inventories for our children? And we'll spend most of the time on how do you plan that third column? Because most of us can identify these behaviors. It's planning what we're gonna do about it that challenges us in intervention. So we'll walk through that. So when you were gathering these signals and meanings, and those are the first two columns on your CSI, what is the signal? The signal always includes the when and then what it means, it almost always includes multiple meanings for any given signal. We do this together with familiar people. So we don't just ask the parent, how does the child tell you they want more? The parent very often might say, well, they don't because I'm looking for a gesture or I'm looking for a word. If we're just in people, maybe they can't tell us anything about how this child communicates. What we really wanna do is interact with the parent and child. Watch for things that we observe and say, oh, was that face a happy face or not a happy face? Or the parent says, I don't think they like this toy. I'll be like, oh, how did you know? And they said, well, they kind of made this in their throat and say, is it just that sound? Or is it a sound plus their face? Or was there some other way that you knew this, meant they weren't happy, but is there a different way they'd use that sound when they are happy? And how would you know the difference? So in the context, the parent can interpret what's happening, but just out of context, the parents, the teachers, the aides really have trouble interpreting this information. So just as I said about the signals, don't stop at hand on behaviors, facial expressions, voice. That's what we're waiting for, those conventional signals, but things like leaning forward and brightening, pausing, little bit of eyebrow, tensing your body. All of these are possible signals or just not answering the question when it's been asked. The absence of a behavior can be the way that we interpret some kinds of messages. Every signal has a when in it. So the when is the context or the prompt or the opportunity. Did I initiate this behavior? I call those behaviors on your own. Very, very different from the behavior that only happens when you've been asked a question or presented an opportunity or when something around me happens. When we see children that are early communicators only do things when they're prompted, that says we've got a big opportunity for working on things to happen more spontaneously than they do now. We've got a big range of stimulability, but we haven't seen that transferring to initiation, particularly for our kids with autism, and that is a hugely important question and an issue to address. Remember that we have multiple meanings associated with the same behaviors, and we may have several behaviors that can be the same function. So maybe I reach for something when I want it, but maybe I also lean towards it when I want it or I vocalize towards a partner when I want it or I push away something when I don't want it or I throw it on the floor or I just simply turn away from it or I don't reach for it. All of those would be separate signals, all of which mean I don't want it. Some of them are more active, some of them are less active. We may want to then start to shape the child's behavior to be using more active or more meaningful behaviors for similar functions. If we find we don't have many signals from the child or if we're working with a symbolic communicator, we've got to remember to look for ways in which they're not able to use their intentional communication or their symbolic communication for some functions. And some of those functions may mean bored, I need help, I'm confused, I'm interested, I'm curious, I'm noticing something, I am kind of commenting on it, but I'm not initiating a comment. I need you to stop talking so that I can think about what I want to answer. Those are things to watch for that are almost always non-verbally conveyed for most of our communicators, including our symbolic communicators. So here's an example of signals and we're gonna walk through these particular four signals as we develop this CSI. So we've got a child who bangs a noisy object on the table on their own. So this is an object-based intentional communication, I'm just banging this on a table by myself and I'm not really involving anybody at any point. I'm just doing it. I've got another behavior where I look up and raise my eyebrows when someone comes in. So the when for the banging the object is on my own, I just do this, but when someone comes in, I raise my eyebrows and look up at them. We've got throws objects on the floor after I've used it for a while. This is also an on my own behavior. This is a way that I have for showing a negative reaction to an event. And then we have reaching for a full or an empty cup on my own. So I reach for it because of some presumed intent about that cup. So as we look at the meanings, be sure to consider multiple possible meanings for these. We thought that banging an object on your own means I like the sound and maybe that's one possible reason. But maybe I'm exploring. Maybe this is a play strategy. Maybe I don't know what to do with it. So I'm trying to figure out. Maybe I want help and I'm banging it hoping that the magic out there comes over and helps me. But cause I don't have very good intentional strategies to ask you for help with this. Those are all possible meanings that I didn't have space for to add to this signal. I look up and raise my eyebrows. Maybe it's a greeting behavior for me. Sure, maybe I'm saying hi, but maybe I also just want attention and I don't really know that I'm greeting you. I'll do this anytime you're in the room to get your attention. Maybe I'm curious. Maybe it's kind of like a comment. Woo, what is that? What do they have? Maybe I'm waiting for my turn to interact with you. Maybe I'm watching to see what you're going to do towards me. Maybe I'm a little unsure. Maybe I'm not sure what you're gonna do and I'm apprehensive. All of those are possible meanings for the same child. I may throw objects on the floor because I'm done with them. It's a frequent strategy. Maybe also on board. I'm frustrated. Maybe I also don't know how to use them. Maybe I need help and I've gotten frustrated because help didn't happen fast enough. And then the last one I might reach for an empty cup because I'm thirsty. Maybe I'm also just curious. Is there anything in there? I'm not thirsty yet, but I want to know if there's anything in there. Maybe I want more. Maybe I want to play with the cup. Maybe I'm reaching for it because I want to bang with it. Our individuals have complex reasons for doing what they're doing and we don't want to be limiting those forms of communication. So that's the signal. There's what it means. We'll spend the rest of the time on planning that intervention column. And I have seven basic different types of ways of responding to those communication messages. In general, there are three big picture ways that we respond to any behavior that the child produces. Maybe I want to maintain that behavior because right now that is a good behavior for you and I want to see you continue to do that. I want you to be more aware of you doing that. This is a good thing. And I just, I don't want to add any additional complexity to what you're doing. Maybe we want to increase some aspect of this signal, not just increasing complexity, but maybe increasing breadth. Maybe increasing the communicative function, the range of communicative functions you have. Maybe making this behavior more social even at the same level of complexity where you're at. There are lots of ways to increase the conventionality or the breadth or the use or the initiation of that behavior. And then there are at least some behaviors that we want to decrease input to.  I need you to do less. I need some space here. So if you are doing any of those behaviors that involve an increase in something in your response, we've got to know how are we going to know that the child is in fact doing something new? So sometimes we may think we're increasing their behavior, but if all that's in that third column, the response is us talking. Maybe the child isn't doing anything new and it's just really a maintenance behavior. So if a child does and we say, oh, you said you want more, you want more, more, more, that's just our behavior. The child doesn't necessarily learn anything new to do unless the child did it. My mantra for kids with autism but really all of our children is if I didn't do it, I didn't learn it. So in that third column, if you really want me to be developing a new strategy, you've got to show how you're going to help me produce that new behavior in some way other than just talking at me or showing me. Because if showing me was good enough, I'd already be doing it. There's a reason why I'm not doing the behaviors you've been showing me. Also remember in our response column as we walk through these strategies, only add one new hard thing at a time. So if you've never used a voice output device, yeah, maybe then it's gonna be just our behavior at first to show you that these devices are meaningful or I'm going to help you push the voice output device because I don't want you thinking about picking what the device is right now. I just want you to notice that, wow, this thing is really cool and you might want to pay attention to it. So only add one new hard thing at a time and watch jumping too many steps either from a spontaneous behavior to a symbolic behavior that's a big jump or working from an intentional or symbolic behavior to an augmented symbolic or intentional behavior. Watch how big of a step you're making. So let's walk through these seven ways and these are just categories of ways to respond. The most natural thing that we as adults want to do and that we find easiest to do so that's why we want to do it a lot is to simply respond to reinforce the child's behavior. The child reached and we go, yes, you told me more. That's pure responsibility. Responsibility is a powerful strategy. There's nothing dismissive about responsibility but we're gonna do this mostly for behaviors that aren't yet stable in the child's repertoire. So for instance, the child doesn't very often sign so they're gonna say, my turn, wow, that's great for this child, we're just gonna reinforce the heck out of, yes, you told me my turn, we're not wanting to increase this behavior and keep upping the ante or they're gonna stop producing this behavior. We just wanna reinforce it or you turned your head, you told me more, yes, that's great. If this already challenges their system, we don't wanna keep pushing that ahead. If we want them to be aware of your head turn mattered, your voice mattered, then it might be an A type response, this reinforcing behavior. We might wanna elicit the signal more often, maybe they're stimulable for it but only every now and then. So we're gonna keep doing that when that's on their signal inventory more often so that we then can get them producing this behavior and reinforcing it, reinforcing it, reinforcing it. We wanna emphasize a new concept like more or done or come here. Maybe we're just going to reinforce their natural behavior first so that they have that idea in mind, we can work with that. The more we're working with people who do not have reliable strategies for intentional communication, the larger percentage of our responses are going to be this kind of response because we want them aware of all the different behaviors that they're producing so that they then can be aware that they are making a difference in their environment. So some examples would be the child squirms in their chair. It's a spontaneous behavior. Most parents would just take the child out and it's worth having a discussion with the family to say maybe the child doesn't know she's telling us she wants out and they may need to have us tell them you told me out and then we take them out. So now it helps the child be aware that your behavior mattered enough that I may now do it more deliberately to get you to take me out. Or I have an object and the child reaches for the object so I want another one. Maybe I'm just gonna reach for it again and see if they do it more often and get this behavior more firmly established in their repertoire.  I don't get the concept mad yet but when you make that face it is accomplishing something in your world.  Then we have the responses and when most of us think about moving ahead or increasing their child's use or complexity of a skill or sophistication at using a skill when we think of increasing anything about our responses we're usually thinking of moving up in complexity and that's what a B signal might be but it also might be working sideways at using the same level of complexity for a new communicative purpose. So don't always think of symbolic to intentional behavior intentional behavior to intentional communication, symbolic and keep moving up the chain you've got to get breadth at any given level of communication skill or any given function as well as breadth, as well as depth. So this one we're looking at some other way to expand on their communication and again if you see yourself doing this too often then again we may be pushing every limit of the child and we may wanna look at some of these other letters of ways to respond that would meet their appropriate intervention goals. So some examples of these behavior are reaches for an object but I don't communicate about it. So this would mean I have the soda here and the child reaches for the soda as an intentional behavior but I'm not looking at you to tell you I want you to give me the soda I am reaching for the object, right? So that's an intentional behavior and it's very important that we don't confuse this with I am telling you I want more. So maybe I'm gonna hold the object closer to my face so that when you reach for the object you then reach for me.  So maybe I'll hold my hand in front of the object so that when you reach for the object you accidentally touch my hand and now I've helped you be communicative towards me in ways that are meaningful without you having to be don't touch my hand, touch my hand, touch my hand. You didn't learn anything if all I did was talk but if I helped you touch my hand now you're starting to get the sense that ooh, people matter, hands are useful. This is good. Now here's an example of working sideways on a behavior. Maybe I point at this soda can. Well, nine times out of 10, if not more, the partner's gonna assume you want that thing that's why you're pointing at it. And then we wonder why kids get to school and all they can communicate about are wants and needs communication. That's because that's all we've ever interpreted their behavior is meaningful. We've never really interpreted that as wow, cool. That's interesting.  Or wow, or shiny, or something else about it. So maybe a B response when they point is to first experience that event. In the child's signal inventory, in the skills that we're working on for a child, we should be working on something that conveys the idea of wow and look and uh-oh as some of the very early commenting behaviors that kids do. They may not be saying that symbolically, but maybe this is an uh-oh behavior and maybe this is a wow behavior and we're still gonna work on that commenting from the very earliest points we're working with the child or they're going to be hampered as we get further in their communication development and intervention. So if we have a child who likes to hit things just because I like the way that it happens. Maybe I'm going to hit the thing and we're gonna say wow. So I hit it, we go wow. I hit it, wow. Hit it, wow. We're just going to hit it and experience this for a different purpose to share social communication about this thing that I like to hit. Maybe I vocalize to you. And so I say ah, ah, and it's in a form of intentional communication. Can we learn an additional behavior that's still not even maybe symbolic? Maybe this is my ways. Maybe I don't have the symbolic wave yet, but I'm gonna add something that's a little bit more communicative towards somebody. Maybe I, you don't know. Ah, ah, I vocalize at you. You don't know if it means want or don't want. So maybe I'm gonna hold up the object and see if you lean towards it. Maybe that ah meant I want it. Whereas this ah, I give you a don't want. And so now I now can respond to that new signal in a different way. So if I don't know why you've added me, I'm gonna hold something up and look for an additional specific signal that I can interpret. Another possible response is creating a social routine around things. We know that our children with autism communicate more effectively if I can predict what's happening. Many times I can act on my world in any way I want to all by myself. I don't need you. So one of the more effective ways that we can engage that child with autism in our interaction is going to be around a social routine where I am the toy. Well, how do we create a social routine if the child doesn't already produce them? Well, we take a natural behavior that's happening in their world and we just add a social element to it just for the fun so that getting tickle isn't magic. I know that my behaviors have a role in the tickle game. It's not just a passive recipient of good things that I don't know how to control. And if I know how to expect things in peek-a-boo or tickle or the dad growling at me game, whatever it is, then I'm going to anticipate that things should happen and I'm going to show you new behaviors that should be on my CSI to indicate how I anticipate what's going to happen. So examples of this frequently when parents will tickle a child. So this isn't tickle, this is swinging.  So now that might mean they enjoy it. So now I'm going to swing, swing, swing, pause and see if the child will swing or make a sound or look at me or do something to take a turn. Same thing with tickle. The parent goes, I'm going to get you. And then they just pause before you start tickling the child and see if the child will go, or something to take a turn. We're not looking for any particular behavior yet. We just want to create the opportunity for the child to have a role in a social routine that becomes predictable. So if a child rolls something as my preferred behavior with any object, I roll things on my own. Well, that doesn't involve people. But maybe I'm going to pick an object and roll it to you and roll back. We're going to create some games that involve things. Maybe I'm going to roll something down an incline and we're going to take turns rolling things down an incline. And now there's a game that's predictable that involves people.   Those are options of C responses. A D response is something where it's like an A, we're not going to ask the child to do anything new. But there's another element to this that says, I want you to start to think about what this behavior that you've produced means. I want you to start to build maybe not a symbolic meaning of it yet, but something that helps you represent that idea in a more systematic way. This happens a lot with feeling words.  Maybe we want to touch it and just give you a notion that this face that you're producing means something and gets a result. We just want to have you associate this particular face with a particular kind of result so that you can start to build an understanding of the message. Does that's what makes it beyond just an A response? This also happens a lot academically where we want them to understand in versus out. Maybe every time they put something in a box, we say in because our target is to understand in, not just to reinforce yes, you put it in, which would be an A response. So for instance, looking at something, I look at this noisy thing. I didn't bring any toys in here. Whoa, that's interesting. I'm looking at this. So baby, I might want to give you a label for that. We're not gonna label stapler for a child, but car, for instance. So I look at, I happen to have a noisy car on my desk. So I look at this and then we're just gonna say car. Maybe we're wanting to introduce that vocabulary.  Well, baby, we're gonna say ow or help them touch their face and that's gonna mean ow in some way that just helps them recognize that this face goes along with ow so that next time I have an owie and you don't know why I have an owie, maybe I can start to at least have a concept of what ow means so that I can be moving towards being more systematic about conveying that idea. Or I bang objects on the table and it just means I like to bang it, right? But now I'm going to, as a partner, add the word we because that's something you enjoy.  And that's gonna help me with differential uses of symbols or words, even if I need some help at being more systematic. Three more types of responses and then we'll have time for questions. So now, maybe what I wanna do with my response is to expand the behavior into new context, new activities or in the terms of AAC, new modalities. So at the same level of complexity, maybe do it with a new person because I not generalize this behavior well. Maybe I need to know it gets results in a new situation. Maybe I need to do this with new partners. Maybe I need to know that I can request with my hand or with picture symbols. And those are all E type responses. It's no harder necessarily, but it's expanding it sideways in some situation. And this again is particularly important for our children and adults on the autism spectrum where I don't generalize easily and I really may need help in expanding this. So if I pointing to a picture symbol only an answer to a question, maybe now I need to learn that this picture symbol can also be a way to ask a question or request something for a new purpose, the same behavior. Or if I turn my face away, that means I don't understand it, maybe what needs to happen isn't my behavior changes. Maybe my partner, when you're showing me that you don't understand the behavior, maybe I need to give you object choices because you didn't understand my verbal question. So maybe we need to change the partner behaviors, not the child's behaviors in order to get things moving ahead. Maybe if I push something away in a noisy place, that means I'm frustrated. Maybe everybody in my environment needs to respond to this behavior right now because that's what's gonna help me more than moving off a level of complexity in my world to make this behavior more systematic for me. Another possibility, I've got a gentleman that I work with who every time he's confused about what's happening and he's stressed about routines, he'll raise his hand and go da da da da da da da da. And that just means what's next. So again, maybe what I need isn't a new behavior from me. Maybe I need my partner to offer me choices on my now and then board so that I can tell what's happening next. Those are all changes that involve situation context partners or functions that at the same level of complexity but are giving me more generalization and more opportunities. Then we have challenging behaviors that are not acceptable or not meaningful in some way and we need to have a way to respond to those as a team in a systematic way. Very important when we see challenging behaviors from an individual is to also watch for the warning behavior. So if I throw things off of my desk when I'm frustrated, we wanna watch for that facial expression that says I'm about to throw things or if I'm gonna pinch you, the leaning forward with my handout is your warning behavior and we wanna intervene before the challenging behavior happens because if I haven't yet produced my challenging behavior, now you can give me a more appropriate behavior to produce but if I've already pinched you, by George, we don't wanna be giving you a better way to get something to happen right at that moment because we're gonna reinforce the pinching. Maybe we wanna pause for five seconds and now give you a more appropriate way to do it because we don't wanna reinforce that pinching behavior. So an example here, we had a little girl who would pfft pfft pfft pfft pfft pfft pfft every time I'm frustrated. So maybe we want to have, I hear your voice, you must want all done. Remember that anytime we've got a replacement behavior, we wanna make sure it's just as easy to produce as the behavior I already produced. We don't wanna say push your picture, push your switch to get to be all done, because that's harder. And if I'm already stressed, I don't wanna produce that new behavior.   When I'm already having a tantrum, that is not the time to teach me anything. I just need to calm down first before we learn anything. And this can happen sometimes for challenging behaviors. If I already pinched, maybe we just need to pause and then next time give an opportunity for a new thing. If we have seizures, we need to recognize what a seizure behavior looks like. That's what the first signal is here and then plan a way to respond to that. Or the next one is, I do this when you've asked me a question and I don't know what you mean.  We need to not keep asking the question again and again when you're already working on understanding the first question or I don't understand. Or if the first one is stairs into space, do you want juice or cookie? And the person still looking at juice and cookie, maybe I still need longer processing time and you need to wait. So the last thing here, then now maps onto each of those previous behaviors that we had and picks a different type of response. I've given you examples. So the banging the noisy item on the table, well, that's an opportunity to create a turn. I could do any one of the six responses, potentially seven responses to any behavior. But I think that's an opportunity to get some turn taking going, banging back and forth. The raising the eyebrows? I think this person means a greeting. So I'm gonna help you do something that involves voice output because I really would like that person to come over here and now voice output's gonna buy me something where it isn't gonna buy me something if I can just reach for it myself. The throws objects on the floor? Maybe I'm gonna have a done box that you can put things in so that you don't have to throw them on the floor when they're done and we're going to have an alternative behavior that's just as easy. And then the empty cup? Maybe it's gonna be a partner behavior where we're gonna start to use some object symbols that means something working towards being more symbolic but not yet introducing anything in terms of picture symbols that are moving up several layers of complexity. So I'm done there. We have a time for a few questions, I believe, Kathy. Hi, wonderful. That was, wow. A great jam-packed and really informative. I wanna say systematic.  I know that people are going to maybe have questions, maybe have to process a little bit before they have some questions. I know one of the things, I certainly learned a lot, thank you. One of the things that I've suggested to people when I talk about communication inventories is to think intentionally about modeling, symbolic communication other than giving them the oral word. And I think this has helped me to think that through a lot more, but also given me some questions. Do you wanna comment a little bit about modeling or aided language stimulation? It's huge right now in the discussion in the field. You wanna say anything about that? You bet. Sometimes we would do aided language stimulation for a D-type response. So when I'm reaching for Play-Doh, you're just gonna say, yes, you told me Play-Doh. That's just gonna be starting to say that these picture symbols mean something and that's just pure input to the child. You're not expected to do anything. Maybe if I'm reaching for a soda can, I'm going to now put the picture symbol on top of the soda can so that you can now reach towards it and then I can help you either touch it and say, do you want more soda? And we've got soda here. And then I give you the aided language stimulation of soda as a choice. And now you reach for it. I'm not gonna expect you yet to touch it, but by George, you might just accidentally touch it and then you're again using it. Or if I'm going to model choices, I'm going to say, do you want, we've got two picture symbols. Do you want juice or milk? Juice or milk. I'm going to show you those inputs and I may be, so you reach for your juice and now I'm going to give you the picture symbol input to disambiguate whatever it was you told me so that you can see that this picture symbol has a meaning for what you're doing. So we can give input for anybody using the picture symbols. I would focus when we give the symbolic input to a child for when they're showing us the intent related to that. Otherwise, we're presenting picture symbols as ways to communicate in any way, shape, or form, even for people who have intentional behaviors and are just reaching for the soda. We can still introduce those picture symbols. We don't have to wait to introduce picture symbols, but we're not going to expect you to engage with them at a symbolic level. We just want you to notice these are good things to pay attention to. So there are different reasons we would use aided language stimulation for any given signal for a child depending on how complex the signal they already gave us was. Perfect. Thank you. That was just lovely. I'm going to just see if there's, I'm going to go to the chat. I see there's a few things in the chat. So people are saying great way to think about early communication. Sometimes we ask two questions in one statement. Do you want to cook your juice? We need to ask one question at a time for some students. Yes, some nice comments here. Does anyone have any questions? It would probably be the simplest if you put them in the chat so that we don't have multiple mics on at the same time. We'll give you a couple of minutes. I know typing takes longer than talking. Alternatively, I've been so very clear that you all understand it, but having done this with all my students, I realize it's harder to implement than it is to explain on my end. Well, isn't that always the case? The devil comes in actually putting into practice but I'm hoping that people will be really intrigued by this and we'll definitely work at doing some of that implementation. And Cynthia, I would not be at all surprised if we get requests to have you come back and maybe do a review or a part two or maybe we could have people talk a little bit about how they've done it. So maybe I'll hope that that happens and I'm gonna see, people are just saying thank you that they enjoyed it very much. So yeah, it was, and as I said, I certainly did as well. So thank you very much. And as a challenge to everybody, let's hope that, oh, here, I'm gonna just say one more thing from Jennifer. She needs to try it out and we'd love a review later. So maybe Cynthia, you and I can talk offline about that at another time to see whether we can come back and see what people in Alberta have done with this CSI. I keep thinking about the TV show and maybe it's not unlike that. The CSI is a detective show and maybe this is a little bit like being a communication detective but doing it systematically and intentionally. So I'm filling some gaps. Okay, so people are saying thank you. So I will say thank you very much. Again, it was a wonderful webinar and for people online, I will definitely post this as well as the slides. A few people asked me for the slides in the chat. Can send them to you that way if you send me an email. And with that, I'm going to say good night for now. And again, thank you. People just keep coming in the chat saying I found this so very helpful and I certainly would agree with that. So thank you, Cynthia. You bet. Okay, good night all. Good night. That was great. No, I, yeah. Oh yeah, you need to be back on, okay. That's what, no, no. I was just, I'm going to stop. I'm going to stop the recording.


Who loses the hand that turns these ever-turning wheels? Whence comes the power and the strength? Where dwell the slaves, the giant race that must toil by day and dark to work these miracles? No slaves, no giants. Mark instead these tiny copper strands that stretch across the rim of the sealable world. According to this huge dynamo, this thing almost alive, contrived of lifeless things. Here is your slave, your giant. Hold this wire within your hand. It's thinner than a man's finger and stronger than a thousand men. Look, a spark has bridged a fraction of an inch. And like some initial act of creation, a new world begins to form. Mark these things well. Here is the outline of the future. Here is the power and the pride. The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation presents the Power and the Pride, the eighth in a series of programs describing what we believe to be one of the most significant developments of our time, the rebirth of the American South. To report this latter-day industrial revolution, NBC assigned Henry Cassidy, distinguished foreign correspondent, to make a tour through the South and report to us what he saw and heard and felt. Today, he tells us about the development of industrial power in the South, the force that provides the energy for the thousand new factories and plants that have risen across this land. Mr. Cassidy, giant things can often be measured in tiny ways. The path of a glacier is marked by a few scratches on some rocks. In a sense, the tremendous changes of the French Revolution are summed up in the account of a French baker peddling his wares on the lawn of the palace at Versailles. So in this revolution that I had come to report, it was the seeming small things that persisted in the memory. I knew that power, electric power, would be an excellent gauge or index to the change, and so it was. Huge plants throwing their shadows across an acre or more, power lines that marched in precise formation over the hill and back again. But etched always in the memory is the picture of a small water mill on the banks of a now-lazy stream. Once it had been adequate to this little southern town, once its now-broken wheel had set the rhythm for this whole land. Women are still alive, I suppose, who could remember when the weed-choked path that leads to its door was heavy with the traffic of busy men. Now deserted and time-haunted, it stands as a symbol of the change that has come. The wheel is stilled. The weather has found a hundred doors in the walls and crumbling roof. What was once a thing of pride is now a dwelling place for bats and creeping things. Surely this was a starting place for my journey. Perhaps I would remember this and the voices that echoed after the sound had died. It has been the greatest awakening in the people, a desire to really improve their own conditions and do it in their own way. Thirty-five miles due west of Birmingham, a busy little stream the Mulberry Fork, the local folks call it, joins the Warrior River. Here, where the waters join, rises the large steam plant of the Alabama Power and Light Company, a symbol of the changeover from the past to the present and the future. In earlier times, I suppose, this place would be deserted except for wild things and an occasional hunter. Now, it's a stopping place on the long road that we had traveled, a road that leads to factories and electrified farms, to new industries just beginning to develop and old ones revitalized. The steam plant is presided over by a gentleman named A.E. Burnett, strut, his friends call him. Here was the starting place. Here was a man who could tell me in easy, familiar words the meaning of these moving wheels, these fires, these giant motors, warm with stood-up energy. Well, Gorgas was conceived during World War I. At that time, the government needed some power for the production of ammunition and the first unit was built in 1916. Here two additional units was added to this, what we call, the Gorgas No. 1 plant. And then as the years went by and the need for power increased, the other four units beginning with No. 4 in 1928 was installed and then was followed by No. 5 and then 6 and 7. The progress has been always toward more efficient units and to give us a modern steam plant such as the No. 2 plant is now. The process here is to convert the coal into electricity, that's our primary object. We take coal that's produced in the Gorgas mines and put it into the plant. Now the boiler produces steam that takes the water and converts it into steam at very high pressures and very high temperatures. It will generate approximately a million pounds of steam per hour. Steam then goes from the boiler to the turbine where it drives the turbine through a series of blades which converts the fuel into mechanical energy and drives the generator. The generator then produces the electricity that goes out on the lines. It will produce 100,000 kilowatt hours every hour that it's in operation. And so the energy is born, the weapons and the matrix of a revolution. Over the hill and into the valley below, a farmwife throws a switch and within seconds an oven is heated and ready for the soft dough. Watch these dials as dusk comes to this place. Each nervous movement of the hand means that somewhere someone is pushing back the night, commanding this energy to pump a well or milk a cow or light the tubes of a radio scent. You can measure it precisely in kilowatts. You can see the hands move across the dial. But this is not the whole story. There are changes too subtle for these dials. There are other miracles here that cannot be measured in these terms, nor weighed nor charted. It was in the office of Mr. C.A. Collier, Vice President of the Georgia Power Company that we picked up the second strand of our story, a story we would follow across the length and breadth of this land. The smaller towns of Georgia in 1944 were frankly in a very bedraggled condition. Their streets were dirty. There were a great many unpainted buildings. There were a great many buildings in various states of repair. The streets were large and in a great many cases were unpaved, lack of sidewalks, lack of municipal utilities such as adequate waterworks or sewerage systems, a wholly inadequate educational system, and all of the other things that suffer as a result of a lack of income. That was the situation that existed at the time. The people seemed to have lost the sense of beauty and the sense of orderliness to a greater degree than one would anticipate. Many of us in the North, Mr. Collier, were tremendously impressed with a play that had a long run in New York in the 1930s. It was called Tobacco Road, and as you no doubt know, it painted an extremely unpleasant, a depressing picture of certain rural areas of this state. Is there still a tobacco road in the hills that stretch away out of these cities? Of course you realize that the word Tobacco Road was used as a symbol. The outgrowth of long-continued poverty, lack of education, and lack of the other cultural things of life, it was probably typical of all parts of America at one time or another. This program, in so far as my observation goes, and that covers pretty well the state because I get over it, I guess, as much as any other one person, has been entirely eliminated and one would have a very difficult time in finding the material with which to put together another tobacco road story in the state of New York. I wondered about the beginnings of these things that I was seeing. What I wondered was the compelling factor, the initial crack in the dam that was to release the pent-up forces of the future. Of course I know there was no one single factor, but many. There was no single instant of time when the road suddenly turned so gentle with the turning that it was not noticed by the very ones who were charting the new way. And there were a hundred beginnings. In 1934, Mr. Couch, who was the founder of this company, got a group of our engineers together and said that we wanted to get more farms electrified, that that was one of the best things that could be done for the state. This is Mr. Richie, president of the Arkansas Power and Light Company in Little Rock, Arkansas. Here was one beginning at least. A group of engineers gathered together to handle an old problem. It must have seemed a small thing, but the echoes are still sounding. At about that time it was costing approximately $1,500 a mile to build a rural line. That's too much money, we can't afford it. Some fellows have got to get together and do something about it, and told them they had to develop a cheaper method of getting electricity to the farms. Mr. Pittman and his associates developed a smaller transformer and built a rural line like the co-op store using today, and we're using today that cost at that time about $650 per mile. Now in February the 22nd, 1935, we dedicated in the little in the schoolhouse at Magnet Cole, Arkansas, the extension of rural lines into the Magnet Cole and the Prattville areas on an NBC hookup nationwide. We was swapping electric kilowatt hours for eggs and hens and fryers and so forth. And so the wheels began to turn and there was more. William Kennedy again of the Arkansas Power and Light Company gave us a second chapter. We've been working on this rural development program since 1946. We were faced with a basic problem which was directly involved in the rural expansion program, and that's the fact that in order to run electricity to our farm people they had to be economically self-sufficient. We were very much interested along with other rural farm leaders over the state and seeing that that situation existed. We appreciated very much the fact that we were going through an economic change in our farm program here which was involved in change from cotton to livestock diversification of other types. And the reason was because we began to have the money here. The war brought that about to some extent, increasing the price of cotton and so forth and we began to diversify and have livestock. At the same time that we had this economic situation we were faced with something else. Better jobs in the eastern cities and so forth were taking the people away and we realized that we had to do something to keep these farm people at home. Mr. Ritchie took up the story. We have a group of young men that go out and meet with the various communities and help them plan to do a better job and to improve their standard of living in their communities. We like to feel like that the rural electrification program in Arkansas started back in 1917 when the Arkansas Power and Light extended their electric lines into their ice fields in the Stuttgart area. At that time Mr. Couch helped the farmers by purchasing motors and extended them credit taking mortgages on their crop not only for the power furnished but for motors and of course along with the same time they got electrified their rice pumping they also got electricity in their homes. That is the beginning of the rural electrification in the state of Arkansas as we feel. Our program is on a statewide basis and the idea behind it was that the only way Arkansas was going to develop was for the individual communities and rural areas within the state to get together to develop themselves rather than to have somebody else come in and do it. In order to foster that idea we put on this community contest within the incorporated towns and at the same time we worked as Mr. Ritchie told you very extensively in the rural areas. We put on a balanced farming contest to raise the economic level and at the same time we took care of the social aspects of the rural situation by putting on what we call a rural community improvement program the idea of which was to get the rural people to band together to better their living conditions by having better community facilities. It was like a circle that turns always back upon itself more and cheaper power creates a market for more appliances and this means a need for more power I found myself faced with the ancient riddle of the priority of the chicken or the egg. It was Mr. Ritchie again who told me how each affects the other the subtle interchange that gives momentum to this 20th century Renaissance. Every day there's more and more uses being developed for the use of electricity the kilowatt hour consumption for for customers increasing each year as the customer adds on more electrical devices. Our field is pretty well limited to that in the future that is a going out and explaining to the rural people how they can use labor saving devices operated by electricity and save man power cost of electricity has gone down. We've had two rate reductions in the last 15 years one in 1941 and one in 1944 while the price of everything else has gone up since World War two started the cost of electricity has continued down and as we see today we're going to do everything we know to keep from bringing about any increases and we feel that we will be able to continue to keep electricity is the cheapest thing in the household. And the final word a quick look at the future a future that holds no fears only promise here are the words of a revolution as surely as those of Washington or Hamilton. Mr. Kennedy again ending our interview on a note of triumph. Our weather down here is such that we're able to use an outdoor type of construction which enables us to save money in the building of our plant facilities. In 1940 we had a capacity of some ninety seven thousand kilowatts I was checking the figures the other day and at the present time our company alone had a total capacity of five hundred and eighty six thousand kilowatts in addition to that we have long term contractual obligations for a total of some two hundred and five thousand kilowatts it's been a phenomenal growth and we'll show you what's going on down here in this state it's going to continue just recently we were up in New York buying some eighteen million dollars worth of bonds for additional expansion and I expect we'll be back up there next year to see you. The ancient ones they say grew contemptuous of miracles because of long and close association so I found my wonder dulled by miracles made commonplace but there was one final marvel that would never cease to amaze it has a plunderous name underground gasification of coal it's a process whereby coal stored deep in the mines can be converted to gas and hence to energy without being brought to the surface without once seeing the sun that long ago gave it birth here's James elder who's a supervising engineer of the U.S. Bureau of Mines signed here at Gorgas Alabama Mr. Elder they tell me that you have a very interesting experiment going here and I wonder if you could tell me what it is yes we're working on the underground gasification of coal the Bureau of Mines and the Alabama Power Company have been cooperating in experimentation along these lines since 1946-47 our aim is to recover the energy of the coal without mining it and putting it to useful work now you know I'm a complete novice on this subject how can you mine coal without mining it I'm not mining it I mean it isn't necessary to bring the coal itself above ground let's bring the energy out instead of the coal itself and how do you go about doing that the latest methods that have been used at Gorgas include the drilling of holes from the surface to the coal bed spaced about a hundred and fifty feet apart an electrode is placed in the coal bed at each hole a current is passed between them the coal is fired by electricity changed into coke and fired by electricity and as the current passes through the coal coke is formed which is porous and permits the passage of air or other gases after we have carbonized a reasonable amount of coal underground we remove we remove the electric current and pass air in one of the holes and take gases out of the other one the air goes down to the coal bed reacts with the carbon forms carbon monoxide and hydrogen and comes out at the other end of the system the carbon monoxide and the hydrogen are largely responsible for the heating value of the gases which is another way of saying the energy of the coal bed to follow this story it was necessary to descend into a mine roll through I don't know how many winding caverns until it seemed I had reached the dwelling place of the cosmic fires that they say still burn as on the first cataclysmic day of the formation of the world Gorgas Alabama a huge hole like some gaping mouth loomed up before us here was the final miracle but if you would observe this miracle you must follow a road that winds out of sunlight into darkness we're riding down now into the coal mine and Gorgas Alabama we're riding in something they call a Jeep it looks more to me like a roller coaster it's a flat little railroad trolley seven of us sitting in the Jeep Hal Snider with his light on and his tin helmet a pair of blue overalls that they gave me cocky overalls for some reason that I don't understand we've had a little lecture before we go down we've been told that mines are not dangerous but they are confining and a lot of heavy equipment moves around in them in a narrow space therefore each one of us has been assigned one of the mine supervisors we had to stay with him lights on in the helmets now we're going down the trolley into the Gorgas coal mine off deciding we go now onto the single track that leads down into the mine it's a very low entrance everyone keeps his head down pitch darkness ahead of us except for a narrow ring of lights single line of lights looks like a necklace a necklace of gold on a black velvet dress and now we're down in the mine where the actual extraction of coal is taking place how I take it that is the continuous miner I've been hearing about yes the machine directly ahead there that's doing the actual mining of the coal is a continuous miner how does that work help as you see there are six cutting chains which literally rip out the coal with the teeth of the chains they toss it back on to a conveyor which carries it back over the length of the mining machine and dumps it into a what we call a shuttle car hell how many men are working this the continuous color we have six on this section there's six men on this one machine on all of the machines that you see here that in can that includes the continuous miner a loader which operates directly behind the miner cleaning up and the two shuttle cars well how about the miner itself how many men does that take it takes two and about how much do they cut a day they will mine over 300 tons a day and how many men would have been taken in the old days to get that much coal well probably 70 men in other words then hell here two men and this machine do as much work as 70 men used to do in the oldest yes along with the other four men who helped them get the coal on out how long have you been using this help since January of 1950 we got our first one at that date we've since added five more what's that done to the output of the mines do you have any figures on that well it has doubled the output for the mine and we do it much more safely I want to like to add that point because in using the continuous miner no explosives are used to blast the coal and in the result we don't affect the roof as we did in the old days when we drilled and blasted well that makes me think how another thing I don't see any props for this tip in other words we're just sitting here in a cavern of rock and that seems to be the old days they would have wooden props in there in the old days we did use wooden props but nowadays we support the roof by bolting it up a hole is drilled about four feet deep and a bolt is placed in the hole with an expanding tight bolt and by fastening the bolt up tight against the roof the roof is supported without the use of the timbers another thing hell it's cool down here it was warm when we came in it's cool here how do you keep it this way and I might say to the air is sweet that we keep it cool by forcing ventilation currents through the mines with the use of a large fan that you saw as we entered the pit mound well this is a modern mine all right hell where did you study because you must have studied to get this job at the University of Kentucky Mining Engineering yeah thanks a lot help there's been the greatest awakening in the people a desire to really improve their own conditions and do it in their own way to take what they've got and to build it into whatever it's possible to be built into to take their own local know-how and own local capital and own own local labor and process their own raw resources into the finished product largely for their own market and it's been a non-usual job of that done in this mid-south area one final voice see Hamilton Moses chairman of the board of the Arkansas power and light company here is the cause and the effect the beginning and the end tell us mr. Moses what brought about these changes that we have seen well an awakening of the people very largely because of the leadership and in the three states particularly in Arkansas there's been a statewide business organization called the Arkansas Economic Council that was organized in 1942 to go out and get the people to do whatever it is that communities and people can do just let me give you a few instances I take our power cup and his plant to prosper campaign we went out and by given prizes got a large number of the farmers way out in rural sections of Arkansas to enter into a contest to see as to who could do the best job and budgeted himself building a better economy on the farm building better homes a better place for his people in the rural folks to live and the first year 15,000 different farm families entered into that contest it's one quite a bit of recognition out over the country and it's been done in a number of places another thing was rural electrification I doubt if there's anything that's happened in our area that's given the people more hope and put a little bit more zest into the life of the rural folks and rural electrification and by the way you'll be surprised to know that our state in Arkansas is right at the tops in rural electrification and that's been accomplished very largely since the war our company the Arkansas Power and Light to purge size and per number of customers is carried more lights to farmhouses than the other private utility in America and our 18 rural electric cooperatives have done the first-class job in an Arkansas now is what you can call 90% rural electrified it sounds to me Mr. Moses as though here what you're doing is building spiritually pretty much we were finding the physical changes they were changing their cattle or they're improving their soil and here you're improving the spirit well Mr. Cassidy I believe that's correct and I believe that our experience down there has taught us that the number one you've got to go out and lead the people into a better spirit and into a better frame of mind so they'll go out and build better places and better communities in which to live before you can do any too much in building industrially and physically we found that there's thousands of concerns all over this nation especially in the north and east looking for new places to go and new homes for their people and a little bit more sunshine and climate but they had a hard time finding it and it led us to the conclusion that our first job was to go out and get our people organized to build better communities in which to live and build more inviting rural life and community life down there that when we did that concerns all over the nation would come and look it up and we believe that's proven true now this was the miracle that we found this the revolution born of cosmic things deep in the womb of the earth trace its path in power lines that stretch across the hills measure it in ancient roads repaved now and lighted you can see a part of it each time a dynamo turns or a generator hums with energy you can hear it in the triumphant voices a hand moves across a dial night comes but the darkness is beaten back in a thousand places wheels too big for turning move as though a thousand men were lending the strength of their arms and backs this is the weapon of the revolution that has come to this land this is the power and the you've been listening to the power and the prize the eighth in a series heritage over the land describing the changes that have lately come to the American sound this series is written and directed by William Allen Bayles and produced by miss Lee F. Payton it is anticipated that future series will deal with developments in other sections of the country next week the story of petrochemicals


Clint Frazier He will start tonight's game on the bench after getting called up earlier today for his second stint with the big club this year There was yet to get on the field. He hit 267 last year with 12 homers and 38 RBI in 69 games Gonna be interesting to see what Frazier does with this opportunity. We all know what he could do at the plate No, John Carlo Stanton. They opted to call up Clint Frazier from the alternate site Aaron Boone spoke about that decision just a short while ago It's very difficult having to send him out You know a week or ten days ago, you know based on Obviously his past performance his talent what we believe in But also how he performed in the spring and the summer and I feel like where he's at right now To his credit he went down there the next day and got right to work and and the work's been really good and consistent And excited to have him back Yeah, I could see him DH and I could see him playing in the outfield Yeah, I see him Absolutely getting getting looks everywhere Yeah, I talked to him yesterday for a little bit and then I I saw him down in the cage when he was getting his early work in and Obviously excited to be here and he's ready to go I thought he looked really good in spring training and then we all got sent home You know the middle of March and and had to go on a break for a little bit But I thought coming back to summer camp. I thought he looked really good Not just offensively but defensively. I know he's put a lot of work in out there improve his game So I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of them and and again. He's another guy. I'm excited to see him get some opportunities out there And you can hear from Brett Gardner tomorrow during the BP show as far as Clint Frazier is concerned He did have some success last year with limited opportunity 12 home runs in 69 games He is not in tonight's lineups of the outfield from left to right will be Gardner Hicks and judge Mike Ford will serve as the DH this evening The Yankees are just happy to be away from Tropicana field and back here in the Bronx where they have played really well to start the year They are undefeated here at Yankee Stadium and their offense seems to be running on all cylinders when they're here They managed 11 home runs in just four games here in the Bronx so far this year And you wonder if that's a good sign for things to come They'll play 15 out of their next 20 here at Yankee Stadium and 18 of the next 20 here in New York City We love being home and obviously in this environment, you know being home is is a great thing And and obviously we love playing here at Yankee Stadium. So Looking forward to kicking off a homestand. We understand we've got some tough teams coming in here starting with the Braves tonight and you know, hopefully we can go out and and and start this homestand on a high note But we're certainly excited to be here and for a while now


Do you have even more of an appreciation for opening day after the road it took to get you back here. Opening day was always special. I've had quite a few of them in my career. But today was, you know, something different. You know, the injury was tough on me and a lot of people doubted me. I get back to this point. So it definitely had, you know, some extra meaning to get back out there and play. Is there a personal satisfaction level considering you did get back here? You can attribute it in the game. Yeah, but I like my chances of what I felt in spring and I'm just happy to go out there and help us win a game. Jeter, Yankees, you know, being shortstop. What would it like to actually do that today? Be at that position in this uniform? Honestly, I wasn't thinking about any of those things. I was just trying to, you know, stay in the moment and do whatever I could to help us win. I think, you know, when it's all said and done one day, maybe I'll look back at that. And it'd be kind of cool. But honestly, I try to stay in the moment today. Troy, it looked like you kind of soaked in the roll call a little bit more. Was there some rips on mind that or is it just? No, no, not at all. I think it was kind of, it was right in between when I thought he was going to throw when getting ready, so it carried on a little bit longer.  How did you try to soak in the hit, you know, getting on the bat? Pause for a moment there or collecting yourself? No, not really.   It wasn't honestly much to it. We've been a part of some pretty good lineups, Toronto, Colorado. What's distinctive about this one? I've never hit ninth in my career. I know that. So to be at the bottom of the order, that was different for me. That just goes to show how good it is. And it really doesn't matter in this lineup. It can hurt you from her. We can hurt you from anywhere, you know, so that it's fun to be a part of it.  But it is what it is. Do you have a favorite moment from today? Yeah, winning. Always, you know, I play this game to win. So to get, you know, the first game under our belt, that's definitely my favorite moment. Troy, was it emotional for you at all, standing on second base after the hit? Not really, honestly. I had, you know, done some things in spring training, been here opening day. I honestly felt calm out there. And I'd say more so than the first spring training game. I felt, you know, just a little more relaxed and ready to go.