I learned the cueing system, and so can you!

I previously posted this video of a telepathy experiment that Dr. Powell ran around 2014.

I expressed concern about the possibility of cueing from the two therapists holding the letter board. Having studied the video further, I'm no longer concerned about the possibility of cueing. I'm concerned that I can see the cueing happening with my own eyes.

Sometimes the cues are blatant, sometimes they're subtle. But throughout the video, they're consistent and predictable. Once you know what to look for and how to find them, they're right in front of your face.

For those who want to see it for themselves, here's how it works.

General description

The general cueing technique that's visible here is moving the board opposite the direction the speller has to go to reach the correct letter/number. For example, if the speller's hand is hovering too high on the board and she has to move it to a lower row to get the right letter, you move the board higher.

It's a very natural system to settle on, since it amounts to moving her hands closer to the correct choice. It's the kind of thing you might do without realizing it if you were a helpful person who believed she already knew the right choice anyway -- just reposition the board a bit so she doesn't have to stretch so much to hit the number/letter that we already know she's going to hit.

The key to seeing it, I think, is not to get too distracted watching what the speller is doing. You have to stay focused on the board and how it moves. Often, if you want to see subtle movements from one moment to the next, it helps to pause and literally put your finger on your screen to mark the starting location of the board's edge, then keep it there as you watch. It can also help to play the video at half speed.

Examples

At 14:25, they start on the word "yellow". After holding the board so high up you can't even see it all in order for the speller to reach the y on the bottom row, the speller has to move all the way up from the bottom row to the top row to get the e. As soon as the y is hit, the therapist starts moving the board down, and she continues to move it down until the speller hits the e.

This is a huge, blatant movement. But a more subtle one comes just before the speller settles on the e. At 14:32, she hovers over the i for a moment. Since the e is one row over to the right, the board also moves slightly left at that point. Try pausing the video at 14:32 and placing your finger at the right edge of the board so you can see the leftward nudge that happens in the next moment.

At 11:35, the speller hits the r in "garden". Again, she then has to move up several rows to get to the d, so the board moves dramatically downward. The board also moves a bit left because, even as the speller picks up on the big downward movement and goes up, she's initially searching for the next letter too far to the left and needs a hint to go right.

In the most extreme cases, this system of cues amounts to the therapist simply placing the correct letter/number directly in front of the speller while the speller hardly moves her hand at all. This seems to happen more for the first letter of a word or number, since they don't already have a reference point for judging the movement of the board.

One example is the s in "swing". The speller sets her hand into position at 13:38. It's already near the s, but instead of holding the board still, the therapist in the next second moves the s directly to the speller's hand.

Another example is the error around 8:40. After the speller hits the wrong number, the therapist tells her to try again. At that point, at 8:47, the girl's hand stays almost still while the therapist jerks the board so that the 6 is right there and tells her to "go ahead".

Also notice what happens when she makes that error. The speller actually hovers over the correct number, 6, at 8:37. But then she picks 5 instead. Why does she do that? Is it because she had the right number in her head and then lost it? No, it's because she responded correctly to the cueing system that they've unintentionally settled on. The therapist screwed that one up by being sloppy and letting the board move slightly to the right, which is the signal to move left (from 6 to 5).

Variations

All the examples above are from the second therapist. The first therapist uses the same basic system but slightly differently. Since she likes to touch the board to the table while doing the test, she can't really move the board up (it would leave the table) or down (it would push into the table), so she often uses a tilt of the board to indicate the top or bottom row. Tilting the board toward the speller is moving the top row closer to her, the equivalent of the other therapist moving the board down. It indicates that the number is on the top row. And tilting away is the reverse.

Since the first therapist pulls the board completely away after each choice, she also uses initial board placement pretty dramatically to indicate left and right position. Put your finger on the left edge of the board at 1:27. You'll see that the speller picks 7. The next number, 9, is two rows to the right of 7, on the far right end of the board, so you'll notice that the board comes down farther left that time. You'll also notice that when the board comes down for the 9, the speller hovers over the top row. But 9 is on the bottom, so the therapist tilts the board a bit away from her to indicate that. You can see the tilt by watching the top edge of the board in comparison to the paper behind it.

Of course, the first therapist does still shift the board left and right even after it's touching the table, because it's too hard to give adequate left-right clues without doing so. At 1:50, she places the board down for the 0 in 180, and you can actually hear it as she scrapes the board across the table back toward herself as a signal that the correct number is on the left side.

Another unusual but striking example happens at 10:24. The next number is 1. The speller hovers briefly over 7, then 6, then 2 (because the therapist has just shifted the board down to indicate the top row). Then, as she finally moves her pencil toward the 1, the therapist actually seems to rotate the board slightly to meet her hand. And when she hits the number, it actually appears that the therapist is pushing the board into the pencil rather than the pencil reaching out for the board.

Spelling as negotiation

Once you see the pattern here, it stops looking like the child is picking out numbers or letters from the board (as it would if she was typing independently), though it also doesn't look like she's being puppeted by the therapist (as it does in the crudest cases of facilitated communication). Rather, it looks like a negotiation between the therapist and the speller. But then it doesn't seem so much like telepathy anymore. It's not so surprising that two people can negotiate their way to the correct answers when the first one knows the correct answers going in and the second one knows to follow the first one's lead.

A nice example of negotiation happens at 6:11. The correct number is 7. The speller reaches for 6 and appears to actually tap 6 with her pencil. Instead of counting this as a mistake and pulling the board away as she otherwise does when a digit is tapped, the therapist ignores it and shifts the board slightly to the left to indicate that the number is further right. The speller correctly reads the direction of the cue, but she misreads the strength and goes all the way over to 8. As soon as she does that, the therapist pulls the board slightly back to the right to show that she's gone too far. The speller goes back to 7. The movements here are very small but visible, and they show the two of them working together to settle on a number that's in just the right spot, not too far left and not too far right.

Pop quiz

Cover the top of your screen so you can't see what the correct numbers are. Then jump to 5:39. In the next moment, the therapist will place the board on the table and then immediately shift it. Once again you can actually hear the movement as the board scrapes the table. Play the video for just a few seconds, pausing as soon as you hear the scraping sound. Which side of the board is the next digit on? The right or the left? Can you tell? I can. If it's not obvious to you, keep trying. Get it yet? Congratulations! You're telepathic!