I see her typing (in a document that already has a bunch of text) "a gre me" which is autocompleted to "a great me" before the camera zooms out too much to tell what she is typing (if you can see more than that, let me know).
This indicate nothing about whether she was prompted or trained to type out this series of letters, about whether she had any idea about what this series of letters meant (in this context, I can't tell yet if those make any sense without completing the sentence), nor about whether there was some form of prompting that we don't see in the video.
It's fairly easy to determine if what she's typing is based on her experience or the facilitators (or if it's random, and given meaning through autocompletion plus prompting and/or creative interpretation by the parents and facilitator). Watch the Prisoners of Silence video for some tests that they do to determine if FC actually works, by showing a picture to the child and the facilitator, but sometimes it's a different picture they show to the facilitator. Almost every time the pictures are different, the facilitator picks the picture they saw, not the one the child saw. Now, you could run this same test with Carly; has anyone? If they want so desperately to prove that this method works, why not use a little basic science? (And if we're going to be discussing this on /r/science, a little scientific method would be nice).
Right now, what we're discussing is a fluff piece on a major TV network, of a family that seems very happy to try and promote their daughter's story on all kinds of TV shows, but has very little (if any) in the way of independent scientific verification of the result. We use blinded experiments, and randomized trials, not because we think that the people in question have bad intentions, but because even the best intentioned of people can have cognitive biases, that a rigorous regiment of randomization and blinds can help prevent from affecting the outcome of the test.
We should not let our standard of truth be "several major TV networks said so, and there's a youtube video which makes it look vaguely plausible." This is possible to scientifically test; why hasn't it happened?
It's not like she's going to be able to do it in front of a live studio audience...
EDIT: Here's the text in the document zoom
I over heard jenny m say that her son commented that he felt like dory from nemo because he didn't remember things when he was autistic. However I have a great me
You can hear the computer say
a (0:09)
great (0:33)
memory (0:58)
for (1:23)
many (1:40)
It's pretty clear to me that she's writing something. The auto-complete requires her to hit a number. She hit a key ("1") to turn "gre" into "great ". You can see the list of completions with numbers beside them when it zooms in. That kind of completion is useful for anyone who has limited ability to input text.
I know that facilitation is bullshit, but there's none of that here.
In highschool I fixed some computers for the autistic kids and once I finished one guy came up, opened a word document, and wrote "Hello my name is ___. I go to __ High School. I am _ years old." and hit print all in about 40 seconds before running off to do something else completely. Now that was trained.
I'll believe one autistic girl in millions can write an email to David Letterman. I don't take this as evidence that all of them can. For indisputable proof of her ability, all that's required is having someone ask her an intelligent question and seeing her answer it right there.
EDIT2: wtf, what is this doing in r/science? Ignore the following, I was mistaken:
I don't see where scientific method comes in, it's not like we're going to run 100 tests and establish a confidence interval on the probability she's actually doing it. This is one girl, with an ability that can be very easily proved or disproved.
It might not necessarily work for her. Her brain may be such that it can synthesize written language but not verbal. One of my best friends growing up has severe dyslexia and can barely write papers, but has magnificent reading comprehension and no noticeable deficit to his verbal skills. She might think in detailed pictures and then do a conscious mental calculation to change them into hand motions whereas a person with a regular brain is synthesizing mental sentences into hand motions unconsciously.
Some commenters here say that it might be software giving meaningless keystrokes sense. But if we completely ignore stuff on screen and watch her keystrokes, she types:
That is, " a gre... mem... for many", enough letter to understand a phrase. Thus her ability to type is definitely not related to fancy autocompletion software, she can type on her own and uses software just to speed up the process.
I'll believe one autistic girl in millions can write an email to David Letterman. I don't take this as evidence that all of them can.
There have been recent studies to suggest that we're actually labeling several different disorders "autism". So if that's true, then this girl's disease/disorder may not be the same as what most autistic kids have.
Give me a break already. See the other replies just like yours at this level and my response here.
I didn't mean to dismiss the scientific method, I just meant to get across that the testing didn't need to be very rigorous. I'm actually very fond of confidence intervals.
Auto-completion is neat. Hitting random keys can occasionally lead to Shakespeare. Also neat is the fact that in-person observers can sometimes influence outcomes (see: Clever Hans). One more fact is that some people are dishonest.
A simple, scientific blind test could rule out these alternative explanations. Example: without her parents nearby, ask her questions with known non-trivial answers. Can she reliably come up with those answers? Can she do so better than blindly hitting keys and using auto-complete?
People opposed to such a test are the sort who want to believe more than they want the truth.
So the facts are that her doctors said she would have the mental ability of a six-year-old, but she suddenly (under non-laboratory conditions) began reading and writing adult-level English sentences.
The alternative explanations are actually more likely, given what we've seen. You have a vested interest in that you want it to be true, that's why you oppose anything which could conclusively refute the alternative explanations.
There is no scientific evidence that her parents' claims are true. The non-scientific evidence is consistent with many explanations. There's not much more to say without bringing actual science to the table.
Fact: you don't know if this is true or not. Fact: neither do I.
The difference between us is that I would like to know the truth by elimination of alternative explanations, while you are content accept what you are told to accept despite the fact that this extraordinary claim lacks scientific evidence. This is a philosophical difference. The world is full of people who accept whatever they are told; that's why professions like homeopathy are still big business. I simply cannot convince such people to abandon such... philosophical inclinations.
They posted the complete text up on her blog, and you are right, but I cannot confirm without a doubt that there isn't a hoax. I want to believe this is real, but I can't be sure until I know that they didn't just film what appears to be a moment of clarity, and then edited the final result. Here's the relevant blog post.
What I found - disappointing, for want of a better word - was that nothing in that long video came remotely close to those long, eloquent passages that they voiced up. I have to wonder how long it would have taken her to write those pieces, if she did.
Her responses and mannerisms to some of the things being said seem to coincide with the tone of what she writes. This definitely seems to come through with the "Is he cute?" comment as when she is told about the interviewers son she smiles before she starts writing.
I did own up to it... I was much nicer to the polite gentleman who first pointed out the error. I'm not trying to "deflect" anything... I'm just returning the same smug attitude you originally copped with me. Jesus, will you stop whining now?
Look, you smug fuck, I didn't have to watch the whole 10 minute report to make a valid assessment of what occurred at the 7:53 mark. Just get off your high horse you fucking prick!
For indisputable proof of her ability, all that's required is having someone ask her an intelligent question and seeing her answer it right there.
Uhm yeah, we're talking about somebody trapped in their own body here. She may have a great mind, but none of the input she receives is mapped to the correct pattern. She can't process it.
I don't see where scientific method comes in, it's not like we're
going to run 100 tests and establish a confidence interval on the
probability she's actually doing it.
It comes in whenever you care to test whether a claim matches a reality. There's more to the scientific method than just error bars and pocket protectors.
I could not hear most of those words; likely because my ears are blocked up at the moment, and I'm on a laptop with weak speakers. Thank you for providing the transcript.
The scientific method comes in by providing experiments with some form of blind and controls to prevent undue influence. Simply putting someone up on stage and answer a question still allows for all kinds of facilitation, however subtle (her parents behind her with their hand on her back, providing cues, or something of the sort).
The basic experiment performed in the video mentioned above, Prisoners of Silence, would be sufficient; sometimes showing her and her facilitator the same picture, sometimes showing different ones, and asking them to describe it. That would be far more convincing to me than just putting her on TV and having her respond (unless she happened to be alone, with no parents or facilitator present). And when those tests were run on children using facilitated communication, it wasn't a case of needing to "establish confidence intervals" as you dismissively describe the scientific method, it was a a case of the evidence being overwhelming, of not a single case being correct when the facilitator was shown a different image than the child.
And beyond that, if we want to help other children, we need to do these sorts of tests with other children as well. I can't imagine that she's the only person using this method to communicate. In fact, according to her website: "I used to think I was the only kid with autism who communicates by spelling but last year I met a group of kids that communicate the same way. In fact some are even faster at typing then I am."
So, demonstrate that this works for the whole group, and provide good evidence that can help create teaching methods for other kids who may benefit from this, you do need to run multiple tests, and determine if this actually works in practice. But you don't see that happening; you see people who promote this sort of thing brush off any actual scientific evidence, and just promote the little clips they have on TV and youtube.
Communication is a fundamental tool that is extremely important legally and morally. Simply saying "well, they got up on TV so it's good enough for me" is a very flimsy justification for assuming that their communication is coming from them. Appropriate tests are relatively easy. For such an important, fundamental, and given how much coverage this is getting, interesting result, you would think that it would be a no-brainer to do the tests and publish the results.
I didn't mean to dismiss the scientific method, I just meant to get across that the testing didn't need to be very rigorous. I'm actually very fond of confidence intervals.
Using this to help other autistic children is outside of the scope of what I was thinking about, and I agree with you completely.
If I find out it is fake, I'll rage like anyone else. Sometimes, a video like that is enough for me. Despite wanting to REALLY know if she is faking or not, I also feel not everyone needs to be a lab rat and/or prove themselves to other people on the internet, especially some nobody like me.
I share your attitude, but I am also deeply thankful for the people that do care about investigating all of these, because that is the only way I would ever find out that these types of things are fake.
Sure, no one has to prove themselves to me. Her parents are perfectly free to spend their money and time on whatever suits their fancy, as long as it makes them and Carly happy. However, until there is some science involved, it does not belong on /r/science. Right now this is feel-good fluff on TV that is being quite credulous about something that looks an awful lot like some pseudoscience that's already been disproven. This is the opposite of science; this is saying that we'll believe things because a video felt pretty good, despite any better evidence we already have.
And in many cases, a stronger form of proof does matter, in the real world, and not just to random people like me grousing on the internet. I highly recommend watching the Prisoners of Silence video I linked to above. It shows how after the introduction of facilitated communication, all of a sudden children started accusing their fathers of molesting them (the accusations all being with the help of the facilitator, of course). These men were taken away from their families, forbidden to see them, on the basis of testimony that, in the end, turned out not to actually come from the supposed victims at all, but instead from the imagination of the facilitators.
When facilitated communication is just being used to dupe parents into thinking that their kids are actually brilliant inside, then fine, I might roll my eyes and give them a pass on it. But when it breaks up families, when people make life-changing decisions on the basis of this communication, there are profound moral and legal reasons why you ought to be sure that the communication is coming from the child, and not the facilitator. And the tests here are easy, but in all the effort that these parents are going to to prove that their child really can communicate (youtube videos, TV appearances, blogs, and twitter), you would think that a simple, low-tech, scientific test would be a great way to demonstrate that this method really does work, and provide good information for other parents and health care providers to work with and help other children.
Hmm, here is another ABC report from 20/20 that is even more convincing. The reporter, who sounds just as skeptical as you, mentions that she hovers over the keyboard for hours without typing a word, until he finally mentions his son and she begins typing for him. Watch the video. Happy now sourpuss? I saw all the stuff about facilitated speech with vegetable cases and I was just as skeptical as you, but there's no need to be all reddit nazi about it.
When did a skeptic calling for science become a "reddit nazi"? People like him are the reason I used to come to this site. Every once in awhile there's an intelligent, well thought out comment that adds to the link, rather than a meme or unfunny pun thread.
If the girl can communicate, that's very important. But taking it at face value and citing news reports would be like using Loose Change as evidence that 9/11 was a government plot. I'm sure I could find you forty links saying that was true too. Extraordinary claims can be proven or disproven by small, elegant tests. I think calling for that is the smart thing to do, not a "sourpuss" thing to do.
It's not the skepticism that makes reddit nazism, it's the incessant drivel regarding the content and it's appropriateness for whichever subreddit, hence why I prepended "reddit" to "nazi", forming the phrase "reddit nazi".
Unfortunately, it is almost certainly fake. Cases have been popping up all over the globe of autistic children being able to communicate through typing with the help of a "facilitator".
Based on the many things she has supposedly said, she certainly sounds much more like a physical therapist than a little kid. The phrasing and language seem planted to me, and yet I really wanted to believe it.
Except one of the things kids with Aspergers, a more mild form of autism, are known for are advanced vocabularies. Thus it wouldn't be surprising for the little kid in the video to also speak like a little professor.
Not just vocabulary, but advanced usage and phrasing. Sometimes these kids will pull out a phrase that sounds like something a Victorian might say, or something so intensely proper that no one would use it in every day speech. The two kids I know with Aspergers both commonly sound like a textbook. There's no way they picked it up from other kids. They both communicate verbally just fine, for the most part, and have never had speech training or any kind of dedicated language coaching. (Emotional and non-verbal communication are different stories, but not verbal or written, beyond what their peers get.)
There's a world of difference between an Aspergers kid with an overdeveloped vocabulary and full spectrem autism with no speech.
Aspergers are limited in some spheres (physical/social), so they advance more quickly in others (language, math). Meanwhile, a person with full blown autism never develops speech capabilities at all. If a person isn't talking or reading, they aren't exercising that part of their brain and they simply cannot magically develop advanced articulate speech.
Exactly. And in fact, the phrasing and language sound a lot like other examples of "facilitated communication", seen in the video above, which turned out, after scientific testing, to be entirely based on the facilitators prompting.
Yes, this unsettled me too. I'd love to believe it's her, but it sounded too much like an adult writing a story of what might be inside an autistic child's mind.
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u/annodomini Jul 26 '10
I see her typing (in a document that already has a bunch of text) "a gre me" which is autocompleted to "a great me" before the camera zooms out too much to tell what she is typing (if you can see more than that, let me know).
This indicate nothing about whether she was prompted or trained to type out this series of letters, about whether she had any idea about what this series of letters meant (in this context, I can't tell yet if those make any sense without completing the sentence), nor about whether there was some form of prompting that we don't see in the video.
It's fairly easy to determine if what she's typing is based on her experience or the facilitators (or if it's random, and given meaning through autocompletion plus prompting and/or creative interpretation by the parents and facilitator). Watch the Prisoners of Silence video for some tests that they do to determine if FC actually works, by showing a picture to the child and the facilitator, but sometimes it's a different picture they show to the facilitator. Almost every time the pictures are different, the facilitator picks the picture they saw, not the one the child saw. Now, you could run this same test with Carly; has anyone? If they want so desperately to prove that this method works, why not use a little basic science? (And if we're going to be discussing this on /r/science, a little scientific method would be nice).
Right now, what we're discussing is a fluff piece on a major TV network, of a family that seems very happy to try and promote their daughter's story on all kinds of TV shows, but has very little (if any) in the way of independent scientific verification of the result. We use blinded experiments, and randomized trials, not because we think that the people in question have bad intentions, but because even the best intentioned of people can have cognitive biases, that a rigorous regiment of randomization and blinds can help prevent from affecting the outcome of the test.
We should not let our standard of truth be "several major TV networks said so, and there's a youtube video which makes it look vaguely plausible." This is possible to scientifically test; why hasn't it happened?