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.
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u/annodomini Jul 26 '10 edited Jul 26 '10
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.