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What do you think about facilitated comm. & rapid prompt

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What do you think about facilitated comm. & rapid prompting?
BS 29%  29%  [ 2 ]
No opinion 14%  14%  [ 1 ]
Think it works but have never seen it done in person 29%  29%  [ 2 ]
Someone I know uses it- it works! 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
I use it- it works! 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
Other 29%  29%  [ 2 ]
Total votes : 7

WelcomeToHolland
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24 Jun 2014, 7:42 am

I was wondering what the general feeling about it is here. I've been told it's basically total BS and that the facilitator is actually doing the typing not the autistic person. But I always find it so compelling that I want it to be real! I really liked the documentary "Wretches and Jabberers" which featured facilitated communication and I also liked "Talking Back to Autism: A mother's courage" which featured rapid prompting. But I'm not usually one to go for pseudo science either.

For those who are unaware, you should look it up, but briefly, they're methods for teaching non-verbal people with classic autism, to communicate by typing. A facilitator has to hold their arm or give them options in both methods- so the person doesn't do it on their own and that's where the controversy comes from.



kraftiekortie
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24 Jun 2014, 7:48 am

Faciliated Communication has its place--but it must be done carefully.

During the 1990's, the contents of Faciliated Communication caused some false prosecutions. It was claimed, via Facilicated Communication, that some autistic people were sexually abused.



Ann2011
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24 Jun 2014, 7:56 am

I think it's total BS and shouldn't be used at all. How horrible it must be for the person unable to communicate to have false words put in their mouth. And the selfish satisfaction of the facilitator who uses the person's inability to communicate as a platform for their own words.

link - apa

Quote:
Unfortunately there was a problem. Researchers who observed the facilitation process sometimes observed that those who were presumably being facilitated often answered questions when they were not looking at their typewriters or letter boards. Controlled scientific studies also revealed that if one posed a simple question to a child with severe autism, the child could only answer the question when the facilitator knew the answer. For example, if the facilitator could not see a simple object that the child was asked to name, the child could not name it. Highly trained facilitators who had elicited sophisticated answers from their patients in the past could no longer do so when they were prevented from knowing what the patients were being asked.



Ettina
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24 Jun 2014, 8:34 am

Quote:
During the 1990's, the contents of Faciliated Communication caused some false prosecutions. It was claimed, via Facilicated Communication, that some autistic people were sexually abused.


Sadly, there were also some real cases of sexual abuse that were discredited because the allegations were made using FC.

I read this one case report where an autistic FC user claimed he was being anally raped whenever he went home for the weekend (he lived in a care home). Staff had observed he often had blood in his underwear when he came back from weekends. But the guys writing the report concluded he wasn't being abused, because he'd made the allegation using FC and they didn't believe he was cognitively capable. They didn't even bother to look into why his underwear was bloody, to see if there was any physical evidence of rape.



kraftiekortie
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24 Jun 2014, 8:38 am

I think blood in underwear is a dead giveaway!