TITLE: Bernadette - Tactile Memories

BERNADETTE:
This is one example I am thinking of, and it is together
with an intervener who had worked with deaf-blindness.
She played a game with this stretchy tube and they had a ton
of fun and they made many movements.
They had hand-on-hand contact, feeling each other,
feeling the tube, doing all this,
interacting with each other, and we were focusing
that because it was also on the video, so we were looking
at a video, and then suddenly we paused the video
because something unexpected happened.
What happened was that after a moment of pause in movements,
suddenly with a quick movement the student did this
[rustling sound].
And the intervener and I were looking at the video and looking
at each other, what is that?
We didn't know.
We didn't know what it meant.
We knew it meant something for the student.
So we were going back and forth, we were looking at,
was there something that the intervener previously had shared
with the student that involved such a movement.
We were looking for ways to understand what it means,
and then the intervener said, "Oh my,
I remember several weeks ago we really had this tickling game
going on, and I was really tickling
like this [rustling sound]."
And I thought why is this student really doing
that in the middle of a stretchy tube game?
We really looked at it and we talked about it
and the intervener had more interactions with the student,
and what we came to find out was that for the student
when she had so much fun in a game, that fun
and the tubing reminded her about a previous memory,
and it was of course a tactile memory,
and the tactile memory was, I remember another situation
when I had so much fun, and that was the situation
when we had this tickling game and it felt like this
in the arm, and that is
when I felt inside all the laughing and the fun.
So this whole bodily and emotional experience
from the tickling game and later
on with the stretchy tube really had a connection
for the student, and her way of showing
that it had this connection was making one characteristic
movement of the previous experience
about the hands and armpits.
So we said, ok, look, it is so important to share experiences
because if the intervener had never done the interaction game
with the armpits together with the student,
she wouldn't have recognized it.
The other thing is that if we really look well at the hands
and all the body movements, it's more like thinking gestures.
We might learn about what a student is thinking about,
and then when we learn about it, then we can talk about it.
We can say, "Oh!
Are you thinking about a tickling game
when we had so much fun?"
And then you can have this whole conversation and whole narrative
and thinking back what happened and what the fun is right now
and then you have all these opportunities for communication,
like we all do, with talking about our previous experiences
that we have with someone, like reminiscing.
So for me to really become aware that all these little movements
and positions have a meaning, often a tactile meaning,
was really crucial in understanding how
to build communication with a person who is deaf-blind,
to develop together the shared meaning about movements,
and I think if we all can look at activities
from a deaf-blind perspective, from a tactile perspective,
it might really help to connect, to find that bridge,
and to find common ground to understand each other
and to develop communication.