Facilitated communication is an alternative means of expression for people who cannot speak, or whose speech is highly limited (e.g. echoed, limited to one or a few word utterances), and who cannot point reliably. The method has been used as a means to communicate for individuals with severe disabilities, including persons with labels of mental retardation, autism, Down syndrome and other developmental disabilities.

The idea of facilitated communication is to make it easier for a person with a severe communication impairment to use a communication device, usually a portable aid that displays letters, words or pictures. The support varies, from assistance to isolate the index finger, support under the arm to slow down impulsive responses, pulling back on the arm after a selection, monitoring of eye hand coordination with reminders for the person to look at the target, or just a hand on the shoulder to convey confidence.

The idea behind facilitated communication is that a communication partner or trainer aids the individual to overcome neuro-motor problems that impede reliable pointing. Over time, the goal of facilitated communication is to help the person learn to communicate independently. This may require a combination of confidence building and improvement in physical skills of pointing.

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Books about Facilitated Communication

A number of books and monographs describe the method and how to provide training as well as how to assess progress with the method. These include:

Biklen, D. (1993). Communication unbound. New York: Teachers College Press.

Biklen, D. & Cardinal, D. (Eds.) (1997) Contested words, contested science: Unraveling the facilitated communication controversy. New York: Teachers College Press.

Crossley, R. (1994). Facilitated communication training. New York: Teachers College Press.

Books that reveal the progress of individuals who first learned to communicate with facilitation include:

Biklen, D. (2005) Autism and the myth of the person alone. New York: NYU Press.
Crossley, R. (1997) Speechless. New York: Dutton.

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Research on Facilitated Communication:

Facilitated Communication is controversial. This is because it has been shown that a facilitator’s physical touch of the typist’s hand or arm may influence a person’s pointing, and because a number of studies failed to validate authorship (Bebko, Perry, and Bryson, 1996; Bomba, O’Donnell, Markowitz, and Holmes, 1996; Cabay, 1994; Crews, Sanders, Hensley, Johnson, Bonaventura and Rhodes, 1995; Eberlin, McConnachie, Ibel, and Volpe, 1993; Klewe, 1993; Montee, Miltenbgerger, and Wittrock, 1995; Moore, Donovan, Hudson, Dykstra, and Lawrence, 1993; Regal, Rooney, and Wandas, 1994; Shane and Kearns, 1994; Smith and Belcher, 1993; Szempruch and Jacobson, 1993; and Wheeler, Jacobson, Paglieri, and Schwartz, 1993).

Other studies, using a range of test situations as well as linguistic analysis and documentation of physical, independent-of-facilitator typing have successfully demonstrated authorship (Broderick and Kasa-Hendrickson, 2001; Calculator and Singer, 1992; Cardinal, Hanson, and Wakeham, 1996; Emerson, Grayson, and Griffiths, 2001; Janzen-Wilde, Duchan and Higginbotham, 1995; Niemi and Karna-Lin, 2002; Rubin, Biklen, Kasa-Hendrickson, Kluth, Cardinal and Broderick, 2001; Sheehan and Matuozzi, 1996; Weiss, Wagner and Bauman, 1996; and Zanobini and Scopesi, 2001). The studies by Cardinal and his colleagues (1996), Sheehan and Matuozzi (1996), and Weiss, Wagner and Bauman (1996) all involved message passing experiments, but unlike many of the assessments in which individuals failed to demonstrate authorship, these included extensive testing sessions, with the possible effect of desensitizing the subjects to test anxiety. Other studies noted above in which individuals successfully demonstrated authorship employed unobtrusive assessments such as linguistic analysis and observations of independent typing after a period of facilitated typing.

Concerning the latter, Beukelman and Mirenda (1998) state, “in regard to a small group of people around the world who began communicating through FC (facilitated communication) and are now able to type either independently or with minimal, hand-on-shoulder support... there can be no doubt that, for them, (facilitated communication) ‘worked,’ in that it opened the door to communication for the first time.... For them, the controversy has ended” (p.327). In recent years, individuals who have begun to type independently have published autobiographical accounts (Blackman, 1999; Mukhopadhyay, 2000; Rubin, Biklen, Kasa-Hendrickson, Kluth, Cardinal, and Broderick, A., 2001) and one is featured in a research article on learning to speak after first learning to type (Broderick and Kasa-Hendrickson, 2001).

For more information about Facilitated Communication, visit the web site of the FC Institute of Syracuse University: http://soeweb.syr.edu/thefci/

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References:

Bebko, J., Perry, A., & Bryson, S. (1996). Multiple method validation study of facilitated communication: ii. individual differences and subgroup results. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 26, 19-42.

Biklen, D. (1993). Communication unbound. New York: Teachers College Press.

Biklen, D. & Cardinal, D. (Eds.) (1997) Contested words, contested science: Unraveling the facilitated communication controversy. New York: Teachers College Press.

Biklen, D. (2005) Autism and the myth of the person alone. New York: NYU Press.

Bomba, C., O'Donnell, L., Markowitz, C., & Holmes, D. (1996). Evaluating the impact of facilitated communication on the communicative competence of fourteen students with autism, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 26, 43-58.

Broderick, A. A. & Kasa-Hendrickson, C. (2001). “Say just one word at first”: the emergence of reliable speech in a student labeled with autism. Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, 26, 13-24.

Cabay, M. (1994). Brief report: A controlled evaluation of facilitated communication using open-ended and fill-in questions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 24, 517-527.
Calculator, S. & Singer, K. (1992). Preliminary validation of facilitated communication.
Topics in Language Disorders, 12, ix-xvi.

Cardinal, D. N., Hanson, D. & Wakeham, J. (1996). Investigation of authorship in
facilitated communication. Mental Retardation, 34, 231-242.

Crews, W., Sanders, E., Hensley, L., Johnson, Y., Bonaventura, S., & Rhodes, R. (1995). An evaluation of facilitated communication in a group of nonverbal individuals with mental retardation. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 25, 205-213.

Crossley, R. (1994). Facilitated communication training. New York: Teachers College Press.
Crossley, R. (1997) Speechless. New York: Dutton.

Eberlin, M., McConnachie, G., Ibel, S., & Volpe, L. (1993). 'Facilitated communication': A failure to replicate the phenomenon. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 23, 507-529.

Emerson, A., Grayson, A., & Griffiths, A. (2001). Can’t or won’t? Evidence relating to authorship in facilitated communication. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 36 (Supp), 98-103.

Janzen-Wilde, M., Duchan, J., & Higginbotham, D. (1995). Successful use of facilitated
communication with an oral child. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 38, 658-676.

Klewe, L. (1993). Brief report: An empirical evaluation of spelling boards as a means of communication for the multihandicapped. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 23, 559-566.

Montee, B., Miltenberger, R., & Wittrock, D. (1995). An experimental analysis of facilitated communication. Journal of Applied Behaviour Analysis, 28, 189-200.

Moore, S., Donovan, B., Hudson, A., Dykstra, J., & Lawrence, J. (1993). Brief report; Evaluation of eight case studies of facilitated communication. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 23, 531-539.

Niemi, J. & Karna-Lin, E. (2002). Grammar and lexicon in facilitated communication: A
linguistic authorship analysis of a Finnish case. Mental Retardation, 40, 347-357.

Regal, R., Rooney, J., & Wandas, T. (1994). Facilitated communication: An experimental evaluation. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 24, 345-355.

Rubin, S., Biklen, D., Kasa-Hendrickson, C., Kluth, P., Cardinal, D., & Broderick, A.
(2001). Independence, participation, and the meaning of intellectual ability. Disability & Society, 16, 415-429.

Shane, H., & Kearns, K. (1994). An examination of the role of the facilitator in 'facilitated communication', American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, September, 3, 48-54.

Sheehan, C. & Matuozzi, R. (1996). Investigation of the validity of facilitated
communication through the disclosure of unknown information. Mental Retardation, 34, 94-107.

Smith, M., & Belcher, R. (1993). Brief report: facilitated communication with adults with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 23, 175-183.

Szempruch, J., & Jacobson, J. (1993). Evaluating facilitated communications of people with developmental disabilities. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 14, 253-264.

Tuzzi, A., Cemin, M. Castagna, M. (2004) “Moved deeply I am” Autistic language in texts produced with FC. Journees internationals d’Analyse statistique des Donnees Textuelleds, 7, 1-9.

Weiss, M., Wagner, S., & Bauman, M. (1996). A validated case study of facilitated
communication. Mental Retardation, 34, 220-230.

Wheeler, D., Jacobson, J., Paglieri, R., & Schwartz, A. (1993). An experimental assessment of facilitated communication. Mental Retardation, 31, 49-60.

Zanobini, M. & Scopesi, A. (2001). La comunicazione facilitata in un bambino autistico.
Psicologia Clinica dello Sviluppo, 5, 395-421.

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Facilitated Communication Films

Inside the Edge: A Journey to Using Speech Through Typing

My Classic Life as an Artist: A Portrait of Larry Bissonnette


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