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FC Theory and General

Who Are Our Phillis Wheatleys?: Mayer Shevin

For Jefferson, a slaveholder and leader of slaveholders, the thought of an African woman capable of the highest attributes of true humanity was "below the dignity of criticism." Jefferson found it easier to believe that 18 respected white men of Boston were either duped or lying... read more...

Facilitated Communication: As Far As the Eye Can See!

Children with developmental disabilities such as autism are more likely to have a vision problem then a child without a handicapping situation, yet children who are developmentally disabled and multiply handicapped are rarely served with complete vision assessments.[...] Recently, I conducted a survey of the vision history of 100 people with autism currently labeled "moderately, severely or profoundly retarded." Results of interviews with their parents or care providers revealed that 85% have never received a vision assessment.

Look at the Board!:

A number of individuals who use facilitated communication type while they are looking away from the keyboard. This obviously raises questions about the validity of the method. [...] At the Institute we have reviewed the videotapes of over fifty people using facilitated communication, and we have noted that people who type and look away from the keys can only do so when the facilitator is supporting their hand or wrist. When the same people are facilitated with support only at the forearm, elbow or shoulder, they focus on the keyboard more directly.

Toward Independent Typing: The Collaborative Use of Portfolio Documentation:

The primary long-term goal of facilitated communication training is to support the FC speaker in achieving the ability to communicate independently. [...] The attached portfolio documentation form was developed by the staff of the Facilitated Communication Institute as a tool for explicitly thinking about and supporting facilitated speakers' progress as communicators.

Facilitated Communication Portfolio Documentation Form: Instructions

www.inclusioninstitutes.org/index.cfm?catID=118&articleID=69

This form was designed by the staff of the Facilitated Communication Institute to provide a structured way of collecting information to include in an FC user's portfolio.

Achieving Independent Typing

The long-term goal of facilitation training is independent typing. The easiest way to think about this goal is the fading of physical support. This means repositioning the sup- portive hand along a continuum: hand; wrist, forearm, elbow, upper arm, shoulder, touch of the clothing. It also means giving less resistance, going from heavy to light pressure.

Who's In Charge Here? User-Guided Training in Facilitated Communication

This article addresses a challenge common to most or all facilitators, facilitated communication users, and their supporters: the struggle to maintain support so that users of facilitated communication can continue to communicate freely and frequently. Facilitators move away and facilitated communication users change programs, jobs or schools.

Two Handed Typing

Two handed typing is a variation of facilitated communication in which support is given to both sides of the body to enable a person to use both hands for selecting letters, typing thoughts and feelings. When I first saw Rachel use both hands for typing, supported by a light touch to the shoulders and then to the back of her neck, I was struck by her rhythm and grace in going from key to key.

Improving Performance

All professionals who work with people who use communication aids with facilitation will recognize this scene: You meet someone socially who is keen to show you how well their son/ daughter/student/friend communicates. They get out a communication display (typically a letter board or a small electronic keyboard, often turned off), and then the user looks around the room while his or her hand, held by the facilitator, quickly selects items from the display. The facilitator gives no feedback, and there's no opportunity for the user to correct any misinterpretation of pointing or spelling until the facilitator reels off a complex sentence or paragraph. So what do you, the "informed observer," do?

It Takes Two to Tango: The Importance of Feedback in Communication

Every interaction involves a feedback loop - I speak to you, you respond to (or ignore) me, I react and so on. [...] Have you ever lost your voice and been reduced to whispering, only to discover that everyone whispers back to you? People with severe communication impairment (SCI), especially people with impaired facial expression, may never be able to give standard feedback, and all their interactions may be skewed as a result.

Portfolio Data Form for Facilitators and FC Users

The form serves the purpose of collecting data on facilitation. It was adapted from R. Crossley (1994) Facilitated Communication Training.

Question Form on Facilitation Strategies for Facilitators

This form asks questions such as: What changes in support did you make during the session? What were the results? What motivational strategies did you use to get started in the session?...to maintain the session? What feedback strategies did you use?

Empowering the Facilitated Communication User

Language and communication have many functions. [...] The goal of facilitated communication is to allow speakers to use language to accomplish all of these functions. To do this, facilitated communication speakers need to be empowered by their facilitators and those with whom they interact.

Keep Learning: Know the Feel of Facilitated Communication

Sometimes we are not sure about the quality of our own or of others' facilitation technique. Could we improve by regularly role-playing with other facilitators, and learning how to give each other honest feedback? I think so. Especially if it becomes something we do often, not only when we believe something is going poorly.

Issues of Influence: Some Concerns and Suggestions

As has been discussed in various places, facilitator influence is a real and important issue that requires consideration [...]. Experimental validation studies abound which demonstrate that, given constrained conditions, facilitators sometimes seem to influence what the facilitated communication user is typing [...]. While concerns over influence are valid, they do not negate the possibility of the same individuals typing their own words (i.e. uninfluenced.)

Understanding and Negotiating Cue-seeking by Facilitated Communication Users

This paper is an attempt to describe the ways in which a facilitator can support the facilitated communication user in understanding his or her cue-seeking strategies, in mastering those strategies which are effective, socially acceptable, and which contribute to the empowerment of the facilitated communication user, and in recognizing and avoiding those strategies which are not.

Message-Passing: Part of the Journey to Empowered Communication

At its most basic, message-passing involves one person conveying previously unknown information to another. Although message-passing has been a large component of many of the studies examining the authorship issue in facilitated communication, message-passing goes far beyond the issue of authorship validation.

What is Facilitated Handwriting?

My first exposure to facilitated typing was in the spring of 1992. A few months after my students started using facilitated typing, they started to initiate the use of facilitation for handwriting and drawing. The concept of the support person taking a primarily submissive role encouraged the students to initiate with their own movements; once my students initiated, I allowed them to show me the path to facilitated drawing and handwriting.

Expanding Horizons for New Research into Facilitated Communication

On April 30, 2000, a group of researchers gathered at Syracuse University to participate in a colloquium entitled, "Expanding Horizons for New Research into Facilitated Communication."(1) The meeting attracted behavioral researchers, educators, experts in augmentative and alternative communication, sociologists, neurologists, neuropsychiatrists and other medical researchers, a person with autism who has written autobiographically about her autism, and others. The following is a brief report of that meeting.

Excerpts from Contested Words, Contested Science: Unraveling the Facilitated Communication Controversy

Chapter 1 frames the discussion by exploring how individuals can be alternately defined as competent and incompetent. Similarly, through accounts of early and recent studies of facilitated communication, we begin to uncover the contextual conditions that interact with people's performance in authorship tests. It seems that recent experiences with facilitated communication parallel certain historical events and the social understanding of intelligence testing. (from the Introduction)

Co-construction of Messages During Facilitated Communication

Most descriptions and studies of facilitated communication have assumed a one-way model of communication in which a speaker has an idea that is formulated into some form that is then expressed to a listener who receives and interprets the message. Such a model presumes that conversations proceed as a series of turns during which messages are passed back and forth.

Responses to the APA Resolution on Facilitated Communication

Editor's note: In August, the American Psychological Association passed a resolution on facilitated communication which stated, in part: Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that facilitated communication is not a scientifically valid technique for individuals with autism or mental retardation. In particular, information obtained via facilitated communication should not be used to confirm or deny allegations of abuse or to make diagnostic or treatment decisions. THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that APA adopts the position that facilitated communication is a controversial and unproved communicative procedure with no scientifically demonstrated support for its efficacy (APA, 1994). The following two pieces were written at our request for the authors' reactions to the APA resolution.

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