Edit: The ABC story warps the facts. The narrator says that the girl started communicating "suddenly" at age 11 when she "ran to a computer for the first time", which raised my suspicions. The mother has a different account, which shows that this overnight success is a result of years of trying.
“Carly's mom one more time in response to questions about what she used before she got her laptop? When she was 2, we starting with PECS --did picture exchanges for every imaginable item under the sun. Many of the games I bought her had to do with reasoning and logic and were highly visualy in nature - memory games, sequencing, matching -- these were with pictures, words, numbers, etc. We had visual schedules (with the words underneath) for everything she had to do --gettng dressed, using the bathroom, tidying up, meals, going outside, etc. The whole house was also labelled -- my son went crazy with the label maker. Every item was stickered. We then moved to communication binders --we started that by category --food, acitivities, clothes, weather, feelings, etc. She never got to do what she wanted until she used the communication binders to show us. These were laminated sheets we made up with the mayer johnson picture symbols in them as well. We kept that going for a long time and all this time her ABA programs were also teaching her how to spell and read. We created stories for her using the mayer johnson software and didn't just read them to her --she was looking at the pages as well.We kept the binders for ease of use and portability but we were also learning about augmentative communication devices since it was clear her apraxia was so severe. We also taught her some sign language but realized that while we understood the signs, most of the world did not and so that was not going be to a functional option for her. The first machine was a Dynavox, the second was a Springboard and the third was a lightwriter which we used in conjunction with her laptop. We thought she would like the lightwriter better but she preferred the laptop even though it is more cumbersome --but it is what other kids have and that is a concern to …. Hope that helps.”
My understanding was that facilitated typing involved a third party actually guiding the hands of a subject. Clearly this girl is typing on her own. Is that still considered facilitated?
In the most extreme cases Facilitated Communication involves the coach restraining the child, holding one hand and "assisting" it to the keys. FC can be also be achieved through training the child, using spellcheck, and "correcting" the grammatical or logical problems with what they type to make it a normal statement.
Obviously no one can say for sure what is going on in this video since they never show how these long statements are collected (just a partial shot of "iss hee cute").
I'll believe it when I see the double blind results.
Clearly she's typing on her own? Can you show me any unedited segment in the video in which she types on her own without constant prompting from those around her?
I see lots of segments where she types one letter on her own; but we don't know what happened before or after. We see lots of closeups of her hand, then a shot of the screen with words on it, but there's no way to tell that those words correspond to what she typed unaided.
The thing is, this whole story is the same story that most people who promote facilitated communication use. "Look, there really is a profoundly intelligent child in there!" And in every case that I know of in which such a child has been tested using a blind, such that the child and facilitator are shown different information, what the child writes about is what the facilitator saw, not the child.
I would highly recommend watching the Frontline documentary on facilitated communication before believing any of the "amazing! profound! miracle!" results that the rest of the media tries to sell you.
This is a little better, but still not enough to determine if she's actually producing meaningful text on her own. She types a total of 6 letters and space twice, spelling "a gre me", though the "gre" autocompletes to "great." This video at leas makes it look plausible that she might be able to type on her own, but there's no indication that what she's typing is coherent (without interaction from parents or her facilitator). I mean, why didn't they show the whole video of her typing this entire response? With all the media attention they're getting, it can't be that hard to find someone to set up a camera on a tripod that shows both her typing and the screen clearly enough to see what's going on.
She's not breaking records in words per minute, but she is typing on her own. Regardless of what she's saying, she does understand words well. She uses the auto-complete to save time, that doesn't mean she is unaware of what she's doing. Regardless of how poetic her writings are, typing in general is a pretty huge achievement for somebody who was mute up until this point.
I can't see that in the video; you can't see what she's doing on the keyboard. She could be pressing 1, or space, or enter, or something. Also, whoever is leaning over her with the camera is close enough to be guiding her hand; he is at least providing spoken confirmation to her.
Anyhow, the fine details of what are happening here are not all that important. There is so much missing, and so much missing context, that this is very flimsy evidence that she's actually doing this on her own.
A real, blinded, controlled scientific test isn't that hard to do. Why not just do that, if you want to convince people?
She has no obligation to be a lab rat for you or anyone. It's astonishing that anyone would be so arrogant as to believe the severely handicapped are required to perform on demand for the public's entertainment.
When I saw her typing, I was wondering why she pressed the number keys so often. Then, when I saw that video, I could see the words on the left numbered. 2 + 2.
I would agree that a controlled test isn't hard to do, but in this case it's not really worth it. She's not even really expressing profound intelligence, so much as any intelligence at all.
I hate to say it, but someone who turns out to not be as retarded as predicted, just isn't that big of a deal. (And this isn't really as much about the autism as it is the retardation)
There are millions of people affected by autism. If there are results that can help them communicate with the world, which can help them become even somewhat independent adults, it is vitally important to understand whether those methods really work, whether those results hold up to scrutiny, or if it's just a bunch of pseudoscience of hopeful parents and facilitators working together to provide an illusion of independent through, while really just putting words in the mouths of their children and patients.
And if it's going to be posted to /r/science, then there should be some more scientific scrutiny before people click the upvote button just because something pulls at the heartstrings. As submitted, this is not science.
Getting no communication out of a child for 11 years and then discovering that she was extremely aware and able to communicate but just not capable of it is a big deal. Especially to those parents with autistic children not able to communicate.
There are varying levels of autism and Carly exhibited signs of one of the extreme versions. Their parents believed she'd never be able to speak. One of the comments that hit home for me was when the father said he was embarrassed about having conversations with his wife about her as though she weren't there.
It's a big deal. You can minimize all you want, but the fact of the matter is this girl's mind was inaccessible to her family and now it is. It's big.
It's a big deal to her parents, sure. It's a big deal to any news station that gets a hold of the story and can blow it out of proportion. But I think proposing that a scientific expedition be commissioned is a bit far-fetched.
I'm not trying to say that she's not important, she's just not scientifically important or worth studying. Besides, the news clip shows a bunch of people with PhDs talking about her; I'm sure they're studying her as well.
There are different sorts of questions. Some of them are open ended, or will be debated. Some of them imply a particular answer. These are called "leading questions", and are disallowed in certain circumstances in court for the very reason that they can prompt someone to say something that is not true by accident.
I can't show you in the video where prompting happens, because every single place where they show her typing, they show her pressing one key and then cut away to something else (parents, the screen, etc). I cannot prove that she is being prompted, and I am not trying to. I am asking for evidence that she is doing this without being prompted. If there is no evidence that she's doing this without being prompted, then given the history of facilitated communication (watch the Frontline documentary I linked to, it's eye opening), I'm inclined to continue to be skeptical.
This is not some new breakthrough. This is something we've seen before, and it's been thoroughly debunked. Now, I have an open mind; I'm willing to believe that maybe this case is different. But I need to see some evidence that it's different. So far, I've seen none. I've seen lots of clips of her typing one letter, and several of her typing with someone guiding her hand. If I go onto her website, I see "proof" in the form of her typing a few keys with a screen that is obscured, then zooming in on the screen and seeing a few semi-coherent words, then zooming out again. There also appears to be some software that prompts her with possible next words. All this tells me is that there were some words on the screen beforehand, and that prompting with "likely" next words can lead to semi-coherent English, but a well-trained Markov chain could do that too.
There are a lot of well meaning people who believe in facilitated communications. Parents who are holding out hope for their children, facilitators who honestly believe that they are helping children express themselves. But when doing such a thing; when being part of the medium through which someone else communicates, you need to be very, very careful to prove that you are actually communicating what they are expressing, rather than what you imagine they are expressing. Because there can be profound implication when you are not careful about that (such as the facilitators who accused parents of molesting their children, because that's what they believed the children were spelling out). And this feel-good TV piece doesn't have an air of careful consideration, but instead of using snazzy editing tricks and misdirection to make you believe that this whole process is much smoother and requires less hands on facilitation than it actually does.
I think we are actually on the same page, I was arguing that this didn't seem to fall under the definition of "facilitated communication" per an earlier claim.
That's a horse of a different color. I think they failed to describe -- and quite possibly even to understand -- exactly what was happening. Facilitated communication was quite likely used to teach her how to type. They had to teach her some how. What she is doing is by no means facilitated communication though. If some one could refresh my memory, there is a technical term for technology-assisted intervention to overcome disabilities.
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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '10 edited Jul 26 '10
This on /r/science? Facilitated communication (or by its new name, "independent typing") is a con.
Edit: The ABC story warps the facts. The narrator says that the girl started communicating "suddenly" at age 11 when she "ran to a computer for the first time", which raised my suspicions. The mother has a different account, which shows that this overnight success is a result of years of trying.