Vikram Jaswal

Vikram Kenneth Jaswal is a developmental psychologist known for his work on autism, particularly augmentative communication supports for nonspeaking autistic people using the discredited method of facilitated communication. He holds the position of Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia.

Biography
Jaswal earned his B.A. in psychology from Columbia University in 1995. He then attended graduate school at the University of Edinburgh where he obtained his MSc in neuroscience. He then attended Stanford University, where he received his M.A. in psychology in 2000, and his PhD in developmental psychology in 2003. As a graduate student, Jaswal's research focused on word learning in young children. Jaswal's dissertation focused on how three and four-year-old children process linguistic labels assigned to anomalous objects, for which he received the National Institute of Mental Health National Research Service Award predoctoral research grant.

After receiving his PhD, Jaswal moved to the University of Virginia in 2003. His early research focused on cognitive development, particularly in the context of young children's learning. Sometime later, his daughter was diagnosed with autism, prompting Jaswal to change his research focus to studying the condition, particularly communication in non-speaking autistic people.

During his career, Jaswal has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Jacobs Foundation, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Institute of Mental Health.

In 2016, Jaswal and his wife, Tauna Szymanski, pulled their 7-year-old daughter, who is a non-speaking autistic person, from school, due to concerns that she would not receive the educational environment she needed in a separate classroom for students with disabilities.

Research
Jaswal's initial research focused on learning in typically developing preschool-age children. Some of his early research provided evidence that sad children learn better than happy children. He began researching autism when his daughter was diagnosed with the condition.

Jaswal's recent research focuses on augmentative communication methods, including facilitated communication for non-speaking autistic people. He argues that the belief that non-speaking autistic people have less to contribute, and less intelligence than people who do speak, is ableist. However, several autism researchers, including Howard Shane, argue that the authenticity of the messages produced by facilitated communicators is questionable. Shane himself published empirical work discrediting facilitated communication in the 1990s.

Psychologist Stuart Vyse critiques Jaswal's authorship study stating that Jaswal didn't blind the facilitator to test protocols and the facilitator held the letter board in the air during the eye tracking activities. Flawed methodology with no explanation of why it is necessary to have the facilitator hold the letterboard in the air instead of flat on a table or on a easel. Vyse states "In my opinion, the evidence they offer is not compelling. As a result, they have not met the burden of proof incumbent on them." Drexel University autism program professor Katharine Beals claims that Jaswal's eye-tracking study "is based on faulty assumptions that undermine both its rationale and its conclusions."

In 2019, Jaswal and Nameera Akhtar of the University of California, Santa Cruz published a research article arguing that autistic people long for social connection and engagement, but that their behaviors are misinterpreted as lack of interest in social engagement. This article sparked controversy among autism researchers. Jaswal and Akhtar argue that the assumption that autistic people are uninterested in socializing dehumanizes them.

Jaswal's work challenges assumptions that non-speaking autistic people have less intelligence, a lack of social motivation, and cannot think for themselves. His work has highlighted the experiences of non-speaking autistic people, building an insider-based challenge to the negative assumptions about non-speaking autistic people.

His work also provides alternative explanations of autism. In 2013, Jaswal and Akhtar co-edited a special section of the journal Developmental Psychology on the debate over whether autistic children's development should be changed to fit current developmental norms, or embraced as a naturally occurring part of the human condition. The idea that autism does not need to be "corrected" is the foundation of the Neurodiversity movement.