PubMed · 1993 · 158 citations · 0 references
Communication SupportEducationCommunicationPsychologyNeurodiversitySocial Communication DisorderCommunication ManagementAutismCommunication StrategyConversation AnalysisDevelopmental DisorderCognitive CommunicationAugmentative And Alternative CommunicationCommunication EffectsFacilitated CommunicationInstitutional Autism ProgramExperimental PsychologySpeech CommunicationHuman CommunicationInterpersonal CommunicationMediated CommunicationCommunicative DisordersArts
The study quantitatively evaluates facilitated communication. Twelve autistic participants and nine facilitators were tested under three conditions—blind assisted typing, unassisted typing, and simultaneous picture viewing—to assess typing accuracy. Participants failed to type correctly without facilitator help, and when facilitators and participants saw different pictures, only the facilitator’s picture labels were correct, indicating facilitators unknowingly dictated the output.
This report presents a quantitative study of facilitated communication. Participants were 12 people living at an institutional autism program and 9 people who provided them with facilitated communication support. These subjects were the 12 most competent producers of facilitated communication in the program. They were shown pictures of familiar objects and asked to type the names of the objects under three conditions: (a) assisted typing with facilitators unaware of the content of the stimulus picture, (b) unassisted typing, and (c) a condition in which the participants and facilitators were each shown pictures at the same time. In this last condition the paired pictures were either the same or different, and the participant's typing was facilitated to label or describe the picture. These participants were unable to succeed in the tasks without facilitator assistance. On trials when the facilitators and participants had different pictures, the only "correct" labels were for pictures shown to the facilitators and not shown to the participants. This finding demonstrates that the facilitators were unknowingly determining what was typed.