Subjects:
Subject(s): FACILITATED communication -- History; AUTISTIC children -- Education
Source: Skeptic, 1998, Vol. 6 Issue 3, p64, 8p, 1bw
IN THE LATE 1980S AN AMERICAN professor of education named Douglas Biklen went to Australia to lecture on mainstreaming disabled children into regular schools. While there he came across a fascinating discovery called Facilitated Communication (FC). FC supposedly enables nonverbal autistic children to speak by "typing" words when they are assisted by a teacher who holds on to their hand or arm to help guide their fingers over a keyboard. Biklen was at first skeptical of this unbelievable breakthrough, but after seeing a live demonstration he became convinced that it was a major development in the disability field. Shortly thereafter, he published an article on his discovery and started training thousands of people interested in the new technique at Syracuse University. So goes the official version of Biklen's discovery of FC repeated in hundreds of news stories over the past eight years. These articles covered everything from the amazing discovery of FC in the early 1990s to Biklen's continued
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PsychFIRST
Title: Failure to communicate?
Subject(s): FACILITATED communication -- Evaluation; AMERICAN Psychological Association; DEVELOPMENTALLY disabled -- Means of communication
Source: Education Digest, Oct94, Vol. As students, they have been no better and no worse than most of my other students. A total of 89 percent of the participants produced responses relating to information they had received, most of which was unknown to their colleague.
Ask Jeeves
FACILITATED COMMUNICATION; AN “INAPPROPRIATE CHALLENGE TO PROFESSIONAL BELIEF SYSTEMS”
By Chris Borthwick
Some reputable psychologists , working for the most part in the field of autism, defend FCT (Donellan, 1992; Maurer, 1992), and some of its most active critics, such as Howard Shane, are not psychologists (Shane, 1993). 71-4 Journal Code: Psychol SciAdditional Info: United States
A study was conducted to examine facilitated communication as an ideomotor response or automatism--aaction that is normally considered voluntary but is performed without the feeling that one is doing something. 60 Issue 2, p77, 1/3p
The American Psychological Association (APA) has officially announced its position that there is no scientifically demonstrated support for the efficacy of facilitated communication (FC), in which a facilitator supports the hand or arm of a communicatively impaired individual while using a keyboard or typing device. The student would point to letters or words and sometimes speak; the assistant would translate for me.
SocSciAbs
Title: The real world of special education. This is an area of facilitated communication that should be clearly discussed with parents at the outset and introduced to users as their confidence and ability grows. A child that did not appear to know the difference between a dog and an elephant can now be shown a series of pictures, correctly identifying them one by one, as his or her hand glides deftly over the keyboard, pecking out the correct letters. College students were taught facilitated communication and were asked to facilitate the communication of a colleague described as developmentally disabled and unable to speak. Yet, at the same time, others say that it is a remarkably beneficial breakthrough for those who have autism or other handicaps. In each of these articles, there have been some argued, yet proven points about facilitated communication, and as we progress in our years to come of health science, scientists continue to prove and help validate the effectiveness of facilitated communication.
Essay's Topics
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