Date of Award

4-24-1998

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Joseph Plaud

Abstract

Facilitated Communication (FC) is a controversial technique which is purported to allow autistic and other developmentally disabled individuals the ability to communicate through typing in a manner which allowed unexpected literacy skills to emerge. This procedure involves physical guidance by an assistant called a facilitator. Subsequent research has shown, however, that the facilitator appears to be influencing the resulting messages and valid communications are not obtained when the facilitator does not have access to the same information as the subject. Previous studies utilized picture or object naming tasks and allowed the subject one opportunity per trial to convey the designated response. It has been suggested that subjects may be actually be inhibited in responding. Five autistic and/or mentally retarded subjects participated in the present study. Three phases included: (1) A replication phase in which the facilitator was screened from the subject's stimulus and exposed to the same, a different, or no stimulus item. The subject was asked to identify the stimulus picture shown. During the second phase the subject was given feedback about the correctness of his response while the facilitator was out of the room, and subsequently allowed two additional opportunities to type the response. In the third phase this feedback was provided to the subject-facilitator dyad.Responses were scored by two independent judges and an inter-rater reliability of 98.7 was obtained. Subject 1 obtained one correct response out of 30 trials during the two intervention phases, and none correct during the replication. Subject 2 also obtained no correct responses during the replication phase and was credited for one correct response out of 16 trials during Phases 2 and 3. Subject 3 was terminated during the replication because his typed responses indicated refusal to participate. Subject 4 obtained one correct response our of 30 trials in the intervention phase, and Subject 5 obtained one correct response during the replication portion.It was concluded that facilitator influence could not be ruled out on the basis of this study; that the validity of FC was not supported; that the use of FC has dramatically declined; and that facilitators overestimated subject's abilities to convey messages using FC.

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