Subject(s): FACILITATED communication -- History; AUTISTIC children -- Education

Source: Skeptic, 1998, Vol. 6 Issue 3, p64, 8p, 1bw

IN THE LATE 1980S AN AMERICAN professor of education named Douglas Biklen went to Australia to lecture on mainstreaming disabled children into regular schools. While there he came across a fascinating discovery called Facilitated Communication (FC). FC supposedly enables nonverbal autistic children to speak by "typing" words when they are assisted by a teacher who holds on to their hand or arm to help guide their fingers over a keyboard. Biklen was at first skeptical of this unbelievable breakthrough, but after seeing a live demonstration he became convinced that it was a major development in the disability field. Shortly thereafter, he published an article on his discovery and started training thousands of people interested in the new technique at Syracuse University. So goes the official version of Biklen's discovery of FC repeated in hundreds of news stories over the past eight years. These articles covered everything from the amazing discovery of FC in the early 1990s to Biklen's continued

The American Psychological Association (APA) has officially announced its position that there is no scientifically demonstrated support for the efficacy of facilitated communication (FC), in which a facilitator supports the hand or arm of a communicatively impaired individual while using a keyboard or typing device. A basic premise of FC is that people with autism and moderate and profound mental retardation have "undisclosed literacy" consistent with normal intellectual functioning, and FC has been claimed to enable these people to communicate

(from The Rocky Mountain Skeptic; Sept. 1995)

Some reputable psychologists , working for the most part in the field of autism, defend FCT (Donellan, 1992; Maurer, 1992), and some of its most active critics, such as Howard Shane, are not psychologists (Shane, 1993). However, the bulk of professional critics appear to be psychologists, and the bulk of professional adherents appear to be therapists and educationalists; taking the 90 authors of 89 academic or professional journal articles on FCT , in the 24 articles expressing negative conclusions about FCT 13 of the authors are psychologists, 11 are not, and the affiliations of 4 are unknown, while of the authors of the 45 articles expressing more positive conclusions the proportions are 3 psychologists to 37 others and 2 unknown, and of the 20 inconclusive articles 4, 15, and 1. One psychologist has expressed the view that psychologists are leading the ranks of critics because they have the scientific training - the understanding of statistics and experimental methodology - that others in the field of developmental disabilities lack (Cummins, 1991), and most critics are united in seeing the roots of the popularity of FCT in this lack of scientific rigor among non-psychologists.

A History of Facilitated Communication: Science, Pseudoscience, and Antiscience: Science Working Group on Facilitated Communication

Source: Applied Cognitive Psychology Vol 14(4), Jul-Aug 2000, 333-359. Additional Info: US : John Wiley & Sons Inc

Some common words found in the essay are:
Howard Shane, FC Michael, Info United, PhD FC, Psychological Association, Sons Inc, Communication Digest, Detterman Thompson's, Research Centre, facilitated communication, Association APA, special education, psychological association, facilitated communication fc, consistent principle, autistic children, cerebral palsy, american psychological, hand arm, et al, communication fc, american psychological association, words assisted teacher, speak typing words, assisted teacher holds,
Approximate Word count = 2589
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)