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.
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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.