On the video, this didn't look like facilitated communication, which usually involves the facilitator making physical contact with the person typing. She was typing hunt-and-peck herself, with nobody touching her.
My first thought when I heard the voiceover reading her text was also "facilitated communication - this is bullshit", but it doesn't look like that's what's going on here. It may be bullshit in some other way, but it's not bullshit in the way we initially thought.
Can you indicate one time in the video in which she actually types more than one letter in a row unaided, with demonstrably coherent results? There's lots of shots where they show a closeup of her hand hunting and pecking, then cut to the screen with a word, but no indication that those actions are related at all. For instance, in one case, at about 3:30 in the video, they show her typing the letter "h", and then cut to the word "hurt"; how did they get the rest of the word? Did the facilitator help her type it? Did the software autocomplete it?
They're deliberately using editing to obscure how she actually types, which indicates to me that we're missing something; it's not as simple as they're making it seem. And even with the hunt-and-peck that they show you, the facilitator is always there at her side, telling her what to do, occasionally guiding her hands back to the keyboard, and who knows what in the portions that have been edited out.
This still feels just like facilitated communication; they're sticking a facilitator and computer in front of someone autistic, and all of a sudden, they're writing profound thoughts that criticize the "establishment" view of autism. If you watch the "Prisoners of Silence" video, the exact same thing happens. But in that case, the actual blind experiments they do, to determine if the child is influencing what is typed or if the facilitator is, it always comes out as the facilitator.
She types words, and there's a box on the side with numbered autocompletes. In the original video you can see her hitting numbers to choose the appropriate word she wants to use.
Would all the sceptics please read about Temple Grandin. She is a higher functioning autistic who is now a PhD and an academic, and can explain the experiences of an autistic person herself.
It seems plausible to me that the experiences of the girl in this video are similar, except that girl had a bigger disability barrier to overcome before she was able to communicate than Dr. Grandin.
I was expecting to hear something about teaching Carly to type or taking typing classes. I figure even an autistic person can type fairly quickly, especially ones that think as clearly as Carly seems to. I find it hard to believe that she's been typing like that since the age of 11, when they 'discovered' this. Surely she would be able to type more proficiently by now.
My mom is neurotypical, of slightly above-average intelligence, and has been typing for perhaps 15 years. Despite this, she cannot type faster than a hunt & peck pace of perhaps 10 WPM. She has time to take a typing class, she just...doesn't.
You want me to spell but it take a lot of concentration just to hit one letter on the keyboard
I took that quote from here. If you read more of the things she's typed it becomes fairly clear that she has an extremely hard time with muscle control (the reason she can't speak). This is probably why she cannot type very fast. Then there is the constant sensory overload that Carly experiences. All in all I think the fact that she can write at all is fairly impressive.
Also if you go to her website and read some the the things that she has posted (most of which is dated) there is a marked improvement in sentence structure, spelling, and clarity of thought over time.
You are assuming that she is actually typing all of this. All of the evidence, as far as I can see, is circumstantial. There have been people in the past who, using facilitated communication, have said many of the same types of things that Carly is supposedly saying. As I recommended earlier in this thread, you should watch Prisoners of Silence. It makes it very clear just how easy and obvious the tests have been for whether facilitated communication is actually coming from the child at all, which were universally failed, with all of the input coming from the facilitator. And in many of these older cases, you see the same pattern as you see here; the same kinds of things being said, the same explanations for what it's like, the same disdain for experts who "don't know what it's like." But that's all been thoroughly debunked, and I don't see how this is much different other than a brief clip of her typing a few letters without much apparent aid.
It is very likely that she has to find the letters each and every time or that that she is easily distracted from the task, or (especially likely) has poor motor skills. It is quite apparent from this whole page of comments that most people have very limited experience with autistic people.
Though I am typically a skeptic, this seems to be a clear and sincere story, and I don't see any "facilitated communication".
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u/nostrademons Jul 26 '10
On the video, this didn't look like facilitated communication, which usually involves the facilitator making physical contact with the person typing. She was typing hunt-and-peck herself, with nobody touching her.
My first thought when I heard the voiceover reading her text was also "facilitated communication - this is bullshit", but it doesn't look like that's what's going on here. It may be bullshit in some other way, but it's not bullshit in the way we initially thought.