Abstract
By manipulating the facilitator's knowledge of a student's just-completed activity, facilitated communication ability and the extent of guiding were assessed. Seven students diagnosed with mental retardation and their facilitators participated in the study. All 7 students were purported at the start of the study to be communicating via facilitation at levels far above what was previously thought possible given their level of intellectual ability. A large degree of facilitator guiding was revealed for each of the 4 facilitators. Minimal evidence of facilitation was found for 4 of the 7 students. One of the 7 students demonstrated validated facilitated communication on two trials.
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We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Sherrie Schlecker and Carole Nebhut who served as judges. We express our thanks to Joyce Lentz for assistance in literature review. Douglas Wheeler was kind enough to make available to us his file of unpublished research studies. Marvin Rosen assisted in the initial design phase of the study. We are especially grateful to the students and staff who participated in this study. This study was supported by Elwyn, Inc.
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Simon, E.W., Toll, D.M. & Whitehair, P.M. A naturalistic approach to the validation of facilitated communication. J Autism Dev Disord 24, 647–657 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02172144
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02172144