facilitated communication

[SRW]

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4311223&page=1

ABC news the people who brought you Jon of God are now touting Carly Fleischmann's ability to type her feelings about her experiences.

Haven't we seen this before? As I recall facilitated communication has been throughly debunked.

Or is this something else? from the little bit of actual typing she does on camera It is hard to know if she is really typing or picking up clues from the people sitting around her.

Anyone know any more about this or the therapist?

[Professor Yaffle]

I don't know much about this case, but it didn't look like your classic facilitated communication. It looked like she was typing by herself, not having her hand guided by someone else. Unless there is some sort of physical contact or verbal encouragement when she moves towards certain letters, I don't think it is really facilitated communication/ideomotor effect.

It may just be that her autism caused her to have difficulty with direct communication, but somehow using the computer as an interface feels less frightening?

But then again, there doesn't seem to be enough to properly tell in that video.

[Professor Yaffle]

Here's a link to another skeptic forum discussing it.

http://www.skepchick.org/skepticsguide/viewtopic.php?p=188057&sid=e0b295efdf84d1c2bcdc78462acafeb5

And in my brief googling, I found that the parents are saying that they never used facilitated communication with her even in the beginning to teach her how to type. Supposedly she started with something called a Dynavox which has pictures and symbols and gradually progressed to a laptop.

I would be interested to see whether when she makes spelling mistakes, they are similar mistake to those her carers make, and also whether she ever does it without someone right by her side.

Edit, found something from the mother claiming that she sometimes types in a seperate room, but usually needs someone with her as she is easily distracted.

Edit 2: Also found that she suffers from oral motor apraxia which limits her ability to use speech. Maybe she has always had good language skills, and was only limited by her speech poblems. But then, did they try sign language? I think I would have to have an awful lot more information on this to be able to make any sort of judgement.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I had no great problem with the piece I saw on ABC news about Carly Fleischmann.

She is not as unusual as Donna Williams an autistic who wrote her autobiography called, Nobody Nowhere at 29. Donna did not speak "naturally" but was so smart that as an adult she figured out that the noises people made were some form of communication and taught herself how to speak (she first practiced making sounds -- "buh", "baa", "bah", etc, etc).

She wrote the book to find out, as she said, "what kind of 'mad' I am".

I heard the interview she had with the late lamented Peter Gzowski when it first aired in 1993. The interview reduced me to tears, it reduced Gzowski to tears, the production staff in the studio to tears, and a few hundred thousand CBC Radio listeners to tears as she struggled to translate her inner thoughts into spoken words.

I can't find the interview on the web any more but http://www.abilities.ca/agc/article/article.php?pid=&cid=&subid=513&aid=186
has a good summary of Donna's story. (Just ignore the phrase "Elimination of troublesome foods, vitamin supplementation". :))

She has her own website at:
http://www.donnawilliams.net/

[Jeff Corey]

It doesn't look like any FC puppeteering I've seen, but I'd like to see more clips. Any links?

[SRW]

I could not find any other clips. I am leaning towards this being something
completely different. I am hoping it is real and this young lady is really finding her voice. However, what I have seen so far does not convince me. Watching her eyes when she is "typing" just does not look authentic. The discussion over at SGU has someone claiming to be Carly's Mom. And she is answering some of the skeptical questions.

[klk]

At work, my actual job title is "Communication Facilitator". I am hired through agencies, families, and private individuals to help adults with developmental disabilities who are unable to speak or use traditional sign language (A.S.L. mainly) find alternate ways of communicating. Where I live, I have recently seen a big trend toward "Facilitated Communication" in different forms.

I would like to clarify that I am very much against FC and work hard to prevent the people I work for from becoming involved in it. I live in Canada, and most of my colleagues I have asked are not familiar with term "facilitated communication" and the surrounding controversies, however many of them are (maybe unknowingly?) participating in it.

The wikipedia article RSLancastr refers to seemed somewhat vague as to examples of types of augmentative communication deemed to be within the realm of FC. The article focused on typing, but the majority of FC I've seen has been using 'adapted sign language' and electronic speech-generating devices, such as Dynavox or Vanguard (google "Aroga", first result, for examples of some of these devices). FC is difficult to stop or slow down where I am, the majority of companies that provide augmentative communication support are non-profit, government-funded, and are chronically short-staffed. Being government-funded, agencies pay the equivalent to (or less than) the hourly wage the counter staff at "Tim Horton's" (very popular chain of Canadian coffee/doughnut shops) make. I see many many untrained staff step into these jobs with no related experience, only the desire to 'do good' (a good intention to have but clearly not enough all the time...). I know many people who went to university to become Speech Language Pathologists, etc. but don't seek jobs in the developmental disabilities community due to the very low pay and little incentives to follow a career path in that community. It is truly tragic! I have seen so many disabled individuals hurt by FC, but it continues to become more and more common here.

[klk]

Oops... I should have clarified when I wrote "The wikipedia article RSLancastr refers to.."
I was referring to a post he made on the thread "Facilitaded Communication gets local press coverage" that links to a Wikipedia entry on Facilitated Communication. :)

[Professor Yaffle]

A similar case I just came across - someone considered a low functioning autistic who has learned to communicated through typing:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/02/21/autism.amanda/index.html

[CurtC]

At work, my actual job title is "Communication Facilitator".

Didn't they have those on the "B" Ark?

[WhatWouldZeusDo]

The Canadian newsmagazine W5 is doing a story on this as well on Saturday. They did do a very skeptical story on the Canadian Cancer Research Group, so I'm hoping if there is some sort of fraud involved that it will not be a puff piece.

Full video tends to show up on the site rather quickly, usually after the show has aired in the Maritimes, so you should be able to see it.

http://www.ctv.ca/wfive

[Cosmophilosopher]

here is a link with some info on this, it looks like the TVshow aired recently...
http://discuss.ctv.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=11490

It appears that the SOFTWARE creates words based on some basic typing?
Has this been verified by credible testing?
Is this really happening, or is it some software that creates words from a few letters, and then more words from the context of the previous words?
Are the sentences being created by the software itself?

It would be easy to find out, try it without that software!
Did they actually air this TV show, without looking into this software?
Maybe someone could download the software trial called WordQ, and just type in random letters, and see if it creates sentences?
Is this the same WordQ.

It would be tragic if this was some type of software doing this.

It appears Carly's mother is posting here?
http://www.skepchick.org/skepticsguide/viewtopic.php?p=189832&sid=6a974f16c112d8d231af71dfe120ba46