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CAN'T OR WON'T? EVIDENCE RELATING TO AUTHORSHIP IN FACILITATED COMMUNICATION
Author(s) -
Emerson Anne,
Grayson Andrew,
Griffiths Adrienne
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
international journal of language and communication disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.101
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1460-6984
pISSN - 1368-2822
DOI - 10.3109/13682820109177866
Subject(s) - psychology , extant taxon , competence (human resources) , cognitive psychology , contrast (vision) , data collection , social psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , statistics , mathematics , evolutionary biology , biology
Most experimental evaluations of Facilitated Communication (FC) provide no evidence that this technique is valid. Important as they are, controlled test‐based studies have characteristically not done justice to the complexity of the issues which surround FC. This paper summarises a long term evaluation project involving various forms of data collection. In this study too, controlled testing has shown very little evidence for the validity of the technique. In contrast, other sources of data, including records of naturally occurring message passing and intensive video analysis have provided evidence that the communication skills of some FC users have been enhanced. An overview of the project is presented, and discussed in relation to the blurring of findings (observations of behaviour) and inferences (judgements of communicative competence) in the extant literature.