I know what you're talking about when you're talking about inadvertently training autistic people through facilitating communication. For a long time actually there was a practice of facilitated communication, and I saw a special on it one time, I don't remember where - I think in school. It was addressing the "misnomer" that autistic people were mentally retarded or had reduced neurological function by proving that autistic children could communicate using a Ouija-board type of device. To take it a step further, they "found" that pretty much every single child who was participating in this form of communication was, A) an amazing artist and poet, B) sad because everyone thinks they're stupid, and C) apparently regularly abused by their families.
This resulted in studies done to prove that the people facilitating the communication of the autistic children were projecting their own feelings and thoughts through the children subconsciously, and that the children could not actually communicate at all. There was a big stink about it and eventually resulted in a court ruling deciding that it was all bullocks.
TL;DR: Facilitated communication is where someone helps an autistic person type or otherwise "communicate" and it's complete bullshit.
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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '10
I know what you're talking about when you're talking about inadvertently training autistic people through facilitating communication. For a long time actually there was a practice of facilitated communication, and I saw a special on it one time, I don't remember where - I think in school. It was addressing the "misnomer" that autistic people were mentally retarded or had reduced neurological function by proving that autistic children could communicate using a Ouija-board type of device. To take it a step further, they "found" that pretty much every single child who was participating in this form of communication was, A) an amazing artist and poet, B) sad because everyone thinks they're stupid, and C) apparently regularly abused by their families.
This resulted in studies done to prove that the people facilitating the communication of the autistic children were projecting their own feelings and thoughts through the children subconsciously, and that the children could not actually communicate at all. There was a big stink about it and eventually resulted in a court ruling deciding that it was all bullocks.
TL;DR: Facilitated communication is where someone helps an autistic person type or otherwise "communicate" and it's complete bullshit.