Facilitated Communication: Method or Creed ?
A case study in Pseudo-Science, Faulty Logic, and Twisted Faith
By Aharon H. Fried Ph.D. (circa 1995)
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Even a cursory glance through the popular literature in the "frum" community reveals a strong anti-Science sentiment (e.g. Ernstoff 1996). In articles introducing or advocating anything from healthy diets, mega-vitamins, alternative healing methods or therapies, there invariably comes the disclaimer to the tune of "even though scientific research and verification are lacking for what we're advocating, we all know that Science or the 'Scientific establishment' has always been rather obtuse and insufferably conservative in accepting new or novel solutions, especially those coming from outside their ranks." The necessity for research to establish the efficacy of what's being advocated is waved aside by statements to the effect that the "facts speak for themselves". Thus, anecdotal reports of successes and miracles rendered by the advocated cure are put forth as more than sufficient to warrant its adoption.
This approach is bolstered by the usually unstated assumption that denying, nay defying, what the Scientific establishment advocates is somehow reaffirming and strengthening our faith in Torah which, of course rests not on Scientific proof but rather on faith. Faith is seen to be not merely a-rational but decidedly irrational. A "true man of faith" is seen as being irrational - believing in the face of (what seems to be) reality; believing in the spirit of "Af-al-Pi (even though) and BeDavka! (in spite of). Rationality and skepticism of any sort are seen as a threat to faith in Torah and smack too much of the words and attitudes of the "wicked son of the Hagaddah". Thus, it is thought and felt that by raising the banner of irrationality and proclaiming one's freedom from the limits and encumbrances of logic and science one has finally freed one's soul for true faith.
Thus, we find belief in Torah and the belief in any and all claimed cures and amulets to have formed an alliance wherein an attack on one is an attack on all. This state of mind and form of thought has some serious repercussions. On the one hand, it leaves the "frum" community open and vulnerable to unproven and potentially harmful and costly methods and cures. It also turns them into unsuspecting victims for all sorts of charlatans and pretenders. Worse still, because faith in Torah is by association and by implication tied to these therapies, when they fail, the perception is that somehow Torah has chas veshalom failed. Judaism used to have as one of its main tenets the separation of true belief from false and foolish beliefs. Today, some members of our community have changed this to the separation of belief (of any value) from lack of belief and skepticism only. This is dangerous. We have been taught by great men that foolish beliefs held alongside true beliefs end up detracting from the latter.
To my mind at least, accepting anything outside Torat Moshe on faith, endangers faith in Torat Moshe. I would like in these pages to explore this issue somewhat. I will do this within the context of Psychology and the prevalence and acceptance of what have been called the "Magic Therapies" - unproven and untested therapies promising great and miraculous cures. I will use as a case in point the use of "Facilitated Communication" with Autistic children with retarded development. I will trace the development of this therapy, its acceptance in the Orthodox community and, believe it or not, its use as proof for the existence of G-d Almighty. Then I will review the relevant research literature in this area! In following this saga we will find an unusually clear example of how thinking unencumbered by the safeguards of rationality can be swept up and extend itself to the extremes of the ridiculous. I will also try to show that our sages of blessed memory advocated a rational approach in all areas, and especially in those areas dealing with earthly existence and the establishment of facts in those domains in which facts can be empirically ascertained.
A new phenomenon: Facilitated Communication
In the past few years a new method, Facilitated Communication, for helping children with communication problems has been reported and heralded. In this method a person who cannot communicate is helped to do so by way of a facilitator - a supportive person who holds the heretofore noncommunicative client's hand making it possible for him/her to "type" on a "communication board" - a simple board with the letters of the alphabet clearly written on it, a typewriter or computer of sorts. This supportive help of the facilitator is said to merely help the client to direct his hands and to overcome the motor problems which would not allow him to type without help. With this support the person can communicate. In time this support is supposed to be faded out. In practice, however, this rarely, if ever, happens.
The method of Facilitated Communication (henceforth FC) was first introduced by Rosemary Crossley, a teacher in Melbourne, Australia in the early 70's for children with Cerebral Palsy who were not communicating verbally or in any other way. C.P. children have motor problems and often normal intelligence. There is good reason to believe that children with C.P. have an inner language, that they know many words, and that they may even be able to read but cannot express themselves because of motor problems which handicap them. After having succeeded with C.P. children, who with a minimum amount of help began to type and communicate profusely, Crossley was encouraged and began using the method with other children with communication problems. This, even though the etiology of their communication problems was different from that of the C.P. children - in most cases there is no evidence of motoric problems at all. They first began using the method with Autistic children with normal intelligence, for whom one might assume or expect the existence of unexpressed linguistic skills and saw success. The method was then used with Autistic children with retarded intelligence levels, for whom there was no logical reason to believe that they possessed any language, and again they saw success. The method was quickly adopted for all sorts of handicapped children by enthusiastic workers in the field (Crossley 1980,1993, DEAL Communication Staff 1992).
From Australia the method was brought to the United States in 1989 by Prof. Douglas Biklen a Sociologist and Professor of Special Education at Syracuse University. Biklen and his students published many articles describing the method and its successes. They also organized numerous workshops across the country to bring the method to the attention of parents and teachers and to train hundreds of enthusiasts as "facilitators". A concerted effort was made to introduce the method into all kinds of schools and for all kinds of children.
To be sure, the use of various aids to help those with communication difficulties is not new. FC is one of many forms of Augmentative Communication methods which have been successfully used as aids or alternatives to verbal communication, via the use of picture boards, writing or typing and the like. Thus aids to communication in and of themselves are not a novelty.
The novelty of FC is twofold. Firstly, it requires physical help - a facilitator holding the client's hand in order to enable him to "type" (Intellectual Disability Review Panel 1988). Secondly, it has yielded totally unexpected results. The adherents of FC have told of astounding phenomena Children who, in the experience of their parents and teachers have never communicated verbally or in writing, children who based on standard evaluations, would be expected to have no language at all, children who according to standard evaluations would be said to be functioning at a retarded level, are suddenly communicating with words, phrases and full sentences at highly literate levels, and are shown to be people with normal intelligence, some even geniuses (Biklen 1990) !!
We are told that these abilities had not been apparent heretofore only because the children were impaired in their ability to communicate. Via the use of the Communication Board, via the support and help of the facilitator, and in the encouraging and supportive atmosphere created by the "culture of facilitative communication" these seemingly impaired children reveal themselves to be in full command of language. They also have a great store of knowledge and seem to have internalized all that they have been taught and exposed to over the years, and more! Everything was merely hidden in them waiting to be expressed - a possibility made real by FC.
And even more! The children have also been shown to know foreign languages to which they have never been exposed. Thus, children of various non-English speaking backgrounds (such as Spanish, Icelandic, and Hindi) answered in... English! (Wolfensberger 1992) And what's more, they answered in a style and at a level way above their chronological age (see Mulick, Jacobson, and Kobe 1992). Clearly then, all previous evaluations of these children's intellectual and linguistic capabilities had been in gross error!!!
Problems with the phenomenon:
A method which reveals hidden intelligence in children, and opens a way through which we can communicate with them and free them from the prisons which their minds are locked into, a method which allows their potential to come to fruition is certainly worthy of acceptance and acclaim and adoption by all who care for children- BUT only after it has passed the tests of controlled studies which support its claims to efficacy. Unfortunately, there are problems both with the method of FC and with its proponents.
Problems with the method:
So long as the child/client does not communicate independently without the physical help of a facilitator it is difficult to ascertain the source of the message received via FC - Is it really the client who is typing/communicating, or is it a message sent by the facilitator (albeit unknowingly)? Even Prof. Biklen, the American champion of the method has written that there exists the danger of the facilitator influencing the communication via subtle hints which the facilitator may be unintentionally passing to the client (Biklen 1992a); nevertheless, he is not troubled by this because the facilitators feel certain that it is the child who is leading the hand and that it is the child who is typing and communicating and not them. Therefore, he suggests, we should believe the facilitators. (Biklen National Public Radio 1992, cited in Jacobson et al 1994).
Another somewhat (empirically) less bothersome problem, but nevertheless a problem, is the fact that there is no theoretical basis to explain why it is that Autistic and retarded children should suffer from what Biklen has called Global Apraxia - a motor problem which, he suggests, makes it difficult for these children to voluntarily initiate the motor movements required to speak or to type and communicate without physical help. Aside from the fact that this term, Apraxia, is loosely used by FC proponents (Mulick, Jacobson, & Kobe 1993), the existence of such a Global Apraxia/motor problems is difficult to accept since there is much research which shows Autistic children to be more often linguistically impaired while motorically normal and even agile (Jacobson and Ackerman 1990 cited in Mulick et al 1993). We are being told "we know the child has apraxia because he cannot communicate without help, and we know that he cannot communicate without help because he has apraxia" - an acute case of circular reasoning.
Problems with the proponents:
Whilst Biklen and his associates have expended much money and effort in organizing workshops, and in other ways of publicizing the method and spreading its acceptance (e.g. DEAL Communication Staff 1992a & b, Chadwick 1993, Crossley 1993), they have expended little or no effort in doing research which might prove the methods efficacy and ensure its acceptance in the scientific community. Actually, they have been impatient with those who ask for research, saying that this would unnecessarily delay the spreading of their method to those who need it.
Crossley and Biklen claim that a research program would create a critical atmosphere which would destroy the trust the clients need in order to properly communicate. They feel that the Autistic child communicates only because of the respecting, trusting and supportive environment granted them by the facilitator. When they come to feel that their competence is being challenged and put to the test, they will not communicate. "Would you ask a speaking person to prove that he is actually speaking? Why then ask these children to prove that they are communicating? After all it's a fact!" says Biklen. Thus, they are saying the method cannot be put to the test. They suggest that we should use, not experimental research, but rather the observational research methods of anthropology to study this phenomenon and to accept the subsequent findings as facts.
Proofs cited by the proponents of the method:
Following this line of reasoning, Biklen (in "A memo to parents", and in Biklen 1992b) cites a number of qualitative findings, which he sees as proofs for the truth of FC. The most important of these are cited here, with the logic which refutes them.
Even a cursory glance through the popular literature in the "frum" community reveals a strong anti-Science sentiment (e.g. Ernstoff 1996). In articles introducing or advocating anything from healthy diets, mega-vitamins, alternative healing methods or therapies, there invariably comes the disclaimer to the tune of "even though scientific research and verification are lacking for what we're advocating, we all know that Science or the 'Scientific establishment' has always been rather obtuse and insufferably conservative in accepting new or novel solutions, especially those coming from outside their ranks." The necessity for research to establish the efficacy of what's being advocated is waved aside by statements to the effect that the "facts speak for themselves". Thus, anecdotal reports of successes and miracles rendered by the advocated cure are put forth as more than sufficient to warrant its adoption.
This approach is bolstered by the usually unstated assumption that denying, nay defying, what the Scientific establishment advocates is somehow reaffirming and strengthening our faith in Torah which, of course rests not on Scientific proof but rather on faith. Faith is seen to be not merely a-rational but decidedly irrational. A "true man of faith" is seen as being irrational - believing in the face of (what seems to be) reality; believing in the spirit of "Af-al-Pi (even though) and BeDavka! (in spite of). Rationality and skepticism of any sort are seen as a threat to faith in Torah and smack too much of the words and attitudes of the "wicked son of the Hagaddah". Thus, it is thought and felt that by raising the banner of irrationality and proclaiming one's freedom from the limits and encumbrances of logic and science one has finally freed one's soul for true faith.
Thus, we find belief in Torah and the belief in any and all claimed cures and amulets to have formed an alliance wherein an attack on one is an attack on all. This state of mind and form of thought has some serious repercussions. On the one hand, it leaves the "frum" community open and vulnerable to unproven and potentially harmful and costly methods and cures. It also turns them into unsuspecting victims for all sorts of charlatans and pretenders. Worse still, because faith in Torah is by association and by implication tied to these therapies, when they fail, the perception is that somehow Torah has chas veshalom failed. Judaism used to have as one of its main tenets the separation of true belief from false and foolish beliefs. Today, some members of our community have changed this to the separation of belief (of any value) from lack of belief and skepticism only. This is dangerous. We have been taught by great men that foolish beliefs held alongside true beliefs end up detracting from the latter.
To my mind at least, accepting anything outside Torat Moshe on faith, endangers faith in Torat Moshe. I would like in these pages to explore this issue somewhat. I will do this within the context of Psychology and the prevalence and acceptance of what have been called the "Magic Therapies" - unproven and untested therapies promising great and miraculous cures. I will use as a case in point the use of "Facilitated Communication" with Autistic children with retarded development. I will trace the development of this therapy, its acceptance in the Orthodox community and, believe it or not, its use as proof for the existence of G-d Almighty. Then I will review the relevant research literature in this area! In following this saga we will find an unusually clear example of how thinking unencumbered by the safeguards of rationality can be swept up and extend itself to the extremes of the ridiculous. I will also try to show that our sages of blessed memory advocated a rational approach in all areas, and especially in those areas dealing with earthly existence and the establishment of facts in those domains in which facts can be empirically ascertained.
A new phenomenon: Facilitated Communication
In the past few years a new method, Facilitated Communication, for helping children with communication problems has been reported and heralded. In this method a person who cannot communicate is helped to do so by way of a facilitator - a supportive person who holds the heretofore noncommunicative client's hand making it possible for him/her to "type" on a "communication board" - a simple board with the letters of the alphabet clearly written on it, a typewriter or computer of sorts. This supportive help of the facilitator is said to merely help the client to direct his hands and to overcome the motor problems which would not allow him to type without help. With this support the person can communicate. In time this support is supposed to be faded out. In practice, however, this rarely, if ever, happens.
The method of Facilitated Communication (henceforth FC) was first introduced by Rosemary Crossley, a teacher in Melbourne, Australia in the early 70's for children with Cerebral Palsy who were not communicating verbally or in any other way. C.P. children have motor problems and often normal intelligence. There is good reason to believe that children with C.P. have an inner language, that they know many words, and that they may even be able to read but cannot express themselves because of motor problems which handicap them. After having succeeded with C.P. children, who with a minimum amount of help began to type and communicate profusely, Crossley was encouraged and began using the method with other children with communication problems. This, even though the etiology of their communication problems was different from that of the C.P. children - in most cases there is no evidence of motoric problems at all. They first began using the method with Autistic children with normal intelligence, for whom one might assume or expect the existence of unexpressed linguistic skills and saw success. The method was then used with Autistic children with retarded intelligence levels, for whom there was no logical reason to believe that they possessed any language, and again they saw success. The method was quickly adopted for all sorts of handicapped children by enthusiastic workers in the field (Crossley 1980,1993, DEAL Communication Staff 1992).
From Australia the method was brought to the United States in 1989 by Prof. Douglas Biklen a Sociologist and Professor of Special Education at Syracuse University. Biklen and his students published many articles describing the method and its successes. They also organized numerous workshops across the country to bring the method to the attention of parents and teachers and to train hundreds of enthusiasts as "facilitators". A concerted effort was made to introduce the method into all kinds of schools and for all kinds of children.
To be sure, the use of various aids to help those with communication difficulties is not new. FC is one of many forms of Augmentative Communication methods which have been successfully used as aids or alternatives to verbal communication, via the use of picture boards, writing or typing and the like. Thus aids to communication in and of themselves are not a novelty.
The novelty of FC is twofold. Firstly, it requires physical help - a facilitator holding the client's hand in order to enable him to "type" (Intellectual Disability Review Panel 1988). Secondly, it has yielded totally unexpected results. The adherents of FC have told of astounding phenomena Children who, in the experience of their parents and teachers have never communicated verbally or in writing, children who based on standard evaluations, would be expected to have no language at all, children who according to standard evaluations would be said to be functioning at a retarded level, are suddenly communicating with words, phrases and full sentences at highly literate levels, and are shown to be people with normal intelligence, some even geniuses (Biklen 1990) !!
We are told that these abilities had not been apparent heretofore only because the children were impaired in their ability to communicate. Via the use of the Communication Board, via the support and help of the facilitator, and in the encouraging and supportive atmosphere created by the "culture of facilitative communication" these seemingly impaired children reveal themselves to be in full command of language. They also have a great store of knowledge and seem to have internalized all that they have been taught and exposed to over the years, and more! Everything was merely hidden in them waiting to be expressed - a possibility made real by FC.
And even more! The children have also been shown to know foreign languages to which they have never been exposed. Thus, children of various non-English speaking backgrounds (such as Spanish, Icelandic, and Hindi) answered in... English! (Wolfensberger 1992) And what's more, they answered in a style and at a level way above their chronological age (see Mulick, Jacobson, and Kobe 1992). Clearly then, all previous evaluations of these children's intellectual and linguistic capabilities had been in gross error!!!
Problems with the phenomenon:
A method which reveals hidden intelligence in children, and opens a way through which we can communicate with them and free them from the prisons which their minds are locked into, a method which allows their potential to come to fruition is certainly worthy of acceptance and acclaim and adoption by all who care for children- BUT only after it has passed the tests of controlled studies which support its claims to efficacy. Unfortunately, there are problems both with the method of FC and with its proponents.
Problems with the method:
So long as the child/client does not communicate independently without the physical help of a facilitator it is difficult to ascertain the source of the message received via FC - Is it really the client who is typing/communicating, or is it a message sent by the facilitator (albeit unknowingly)? Even Prof. Biklen, the American champion of the method has written that there exists the danger of the facilitator influencing the communication via subtle hints which the facilitator may be unintentionally passing to the client (Biklen 1992a); nevertheless, he is not troubled by this because the facilitators feel certain that it is the child who is leading the hand and that it is the child who is typing and communicating and not them. Therefore, he suggests, we should believe the facilitators. (Biklen National Public Radio 1992, cited in Jacobson et al 1994).
Another somewhat (empirically) less bothersome problem, but nevertheless a problem, is the fact that there is no theoretical basis to explain why it is that Autistic and retarded children should suffer from what Biklen has called Global Apraxia - a motor problem which, he suggests, makes it difficult for these children to voluntarily initiate the motor movements required to speak or to type and communicate without physical help. Aside from the fact that this term, Apraxia, is loosely used by FC proponents (Mulick, Jacobson, & Kobe 1993), the existence of such a Global Apraxia/motor problems is difficult to accept since there is much research which shows Autistic children to be more often linguistically impaired while motorically normal and even agile (Jacobson and Ackerman 1990 cited in Mulick et al 1993). We are being told "we know the child has apraxia because he cannot communicate without help, and we know that he cannot communicate without help because he has apraxia" - an acute case of circular reasoning.
Problems with the proponents:
Whilst Biklen and his associates have expended much money and effort in organizing workshops, and in other ways of publicizing the method and spreading its acceptance (e.g. DEAL Communication Staff 1992a & b, Chadwick 1993, Crossley 1993), they have expended little or no effort in doing research which might prove the methods efficacy and ensure its acceptance in the scientific community. Actually, they have been impatient with those who ask for research, saying that this would unnecessarily delay the spreading of their method to those who need it.
Crossley and Biklen claim that a research program would create a critical atmosphere which would destroy the trust the clients need in order to properly communicate. They feel that the Autistic child communicates only because of the respecting, trusting and supportive environment granted them by the facilitator. When they come to feel that their competence is being challenged and put to the test, they will not communicate. "Would you ask a speaking person to prove that he is actually speaking? Why then ask these children to prove that they are communicating? After all it's a fact!" says Biklen. Thus, they are saying the method cannot be put to the test. They suggest that we should use, not experimental research, but rather the observational research methods of anthropology to study this phenomenon and to accept the subsequent findings as facts.
Proofs cited by the proponents of the method:
Following this line of reasoning, Biklen (in "A memo to parents", and in Biklen 1992b) cites a number of qualitative findings, which he sees as proofs for the truth of FC. The most important of these are cited here, with the logic which refutes them.
|
Proponents Proofs
1.It's a fact that the children are communicating, why not accept their communications at face value ? 2. Each individual client communicates in his own style, even when facilitated by different facilitators. 3. Each individual client makes the same unique idiosyncratic spelling and typing errors across different facilitators. 4. The client often uses FC to communicate specific and accurate knowledge which is not known to the facilitator, such as personal information about the client's family. |
The Refutation
1. It is impossible to accept at face value that it is the child who is communicating without first investigating whether he is indeed the one communicating. 2. Neither Biklen, or his co-workers have ever operationally defined what it is that constitutes a "consistent individual style", how it would be defined, and how it was investigated. Who judged whether the style was indeed unique and consistent? Was it the facilitator himself, or someone less intimately involved in the process? This is a judgement which after all entails much subjectivity. 3. Again, who is it that judges the consistency of these errors? All communications received via FC require subjective judgement and interpretation which cannot be proven, since the clients tend to drop and add letters all the time. 4. This assertion remains unclear. It may just not be so. In one study where this was followed up on, it turned out that (a) the unknown information was not unknown to the facilitator, and (b) it was not accurately reported by the child. |
At the same time Biklen and his associates ignore some disturbing observations which many have observed even in informal observations of the method in use.
For example, during a session, while the facilitator is very engrossed and intent on paying attention to the communication board, the children are often observed to be looking at anything but the board. Nevertheless, the typing continues! This becomes even more incredulous when hand held boards are used. In these situations, the board which is being held by the facilitator and the very active child is moving erratically in the air. Yet again, without the child looking at the board, the typing continues! Proponents claim that the children know the board by heart and have tremendous perceptual and perceptual-motor abilities which allow them to type without even seeing the (moving) board.
The facilitators have also been observed to be so engrossed in the board that they often ignored, or failed to hear the child's correct verbal response to the question being asked.
While the decoding of the child's communication is slow and tedious (and often impossible) for outside observers, it comes quickly and automatically to the facilitators. The facilitators explain this by their knowing the child and being more familiar with his communication style. A more likely explanation may be that they can quickly decode the messages because the messages are their own - the facilitator's that is.
Also cited as a proof for FC (reported in Jacobson, Eberlin, Mulick, Schwartz, Szempruch, & Wheeler 1994) are reports that the child often uses FC to communicate very specific and accurate information which is known only to the facilitator, such as personal information about the facilitator. This is explained by attributing to the client/children - the power of telepathy. This proof for the power of telepathy in Autistic children because they communicate information known only to their facilitator should be seen as a negative proof - against FC. It is much more parsimonious and logical to explain this phenomenon by saying that this information was communicated by the facilitator and not by the child!
A poor mode of Reasoning
This last phenomenon - the use of "telepathy" to explain strange findings, and consequently, to use this explanation as a perverse "proof" for FC - is characteristic of the mode of thinking engaged in by many of the proponents of FC.
- First, they accept FC as real on an a priori basis.
- Then they explain its workings by the use of a meta-physical explanations, at the same time granting the method these meta-physical powers.
- Having endowed the method with special powers, they then "spread the gospel." In a short time, these "new powers" become part of the accepted and unquestioned lore surrounding the method.
- With this now newly empowered method, the proponents have enabled themselves to accept and integrate even phenomena which otherwise might be seen as refutations of the method.
- But that's not enough! The contradictory evidence is now cited as actually proving and supporting use of the method. They conveniently forget to mention or even to remember that the explanation is based on a first-assumption which they created but never bothered to check out! 1
When in Melbourne in August of 1994, I visited Rosemary Crossley at the DEAL Center. Crossley distanced herself from the claims of telepathy in FC and also stated that if the child was not looking at the board, he could not be considered to be communicating via FC. However observing her and an assistant working with two adolescents, whose exact diagnosis it was difficult to get, I did see some of the other phenomena reported above - thus correct verbal communications of the boys were ignored while they were being coerced to answer using the communication board! When I asked Crossley about the contradictory research results reported below, she had no real answers. She did assert that it takes many months of training to be a real facilitator, suggesting that the facilitators in the research studies were not sufficiently trained. However Biklen is known to train facilitators in as little as three hour sessions with, according to subsequent reports, truly "unbelievable" results!
The Research
The last few years have seen a number of empirical research studies conducted on this phenomenon. These were first instigated by the courts in Australia (Interdisciplinary Working Party 1988, Intellectual Disability Review Panel 1989) after a number of parents were charged with physical and sexual child abuse based on communications made by their autistic and retarded children via FC. The courts could not convict based on these communications without verification of their veracity. They therefore ordered investigations of the phenomenon (which had to be carried out without the cooperation of Rosemary Crossley and her DEAL Communication center - they claimed an investigation of the method would destroy the children's ability to communicate). In the United States, the courts (Bligh 1993) as well as a number of independent investigators in various clinical and university settings also undertook investigations. These investigations and their results are reviewed at length in readily available sources (referenced below). I will, therefore, limit myself to a very general review of the bare essentials of the research design and the findings, leaving it to the interested reader to go to the referenced sources for more detail.
The essential designs of the research studies are relatively straightforward and simple.
A. Create a condition in which questions can be asked of the child, pictures can be shown to him (which he is to name via FC), or messages conveyed to him such that the facilitator does not see or hear the stimulus/message sent to the child.
The child's Facilitated Communications in the above condition are then compared to the child's communications during standard FC procedures when both the facilitator and the child receive the same stimuli.
or
B. Present both the child and the facilitator with stimuli (questions or pictures) to which the child is to respond.
(The facilitator should of course not be aware of when the stimuli are identical or different.)
Then compare the child's Facilitated Communications in the two conditions.
The research results of close to 30 different studies in both Australia and the United States (reviewed in Jacobson, Mulick, & Schwartz 1995, and in greater detail in Jacobson, Eberlin, Mulick, Schwartz, Szempruch, & Wheeler 1994) are essentially as follows.
Thus, children were shown to be unable to respond to stimuli which the facilitator had not seen and a good deal of the time responded to the stimuli shown to the facilitator. In at least one study (Wheeler, Jacobson, Paglieri, & Schwartz 1993) it was shown that a number of clients who had been facilitated by the same facilitator tended to have similar "response styles." Who then is sending the messages?!!
These results were found in controlled study after controlled study. These studies were also extremely careful in defining the diagnosis of the child, the qualifications of the facilitator, the conditions of the study and the communications. They were also extremely liberal in accepting questionable responses as positive examples of FC. Alas, to no avail. Not even one controlled study was able to demonstrate better communication with FC than without it (a very few children who had some verbal and/or typing skills did communicate successfully via FC - but no more successfully than they could without FC). Thus the "unexpected literacy" claimed to have been found by the proponents of FC did not materialize. (Interestingly, in at least one of the studies (Eberlin, McConnachie, Ibel, & Volpe 1993), the facilitators did report instances of "unexpected literacy" during their informal practice sessions with the clients. However, these occurrences did not appear in either previous or subsequent controlled settings).
Both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the results thus demonstrated facilitator influence. However, in all the studies the facilitators were clearly unaware of their unconscious influence on the communications2. This seems surprising to most people, but not to those familiar with other instances in which people fail to perceive their active influence over physical interaction or language production, such as in the use of Ouija boards and channeling (Hall 1993).
The proponents of FC held on to the argument that the testing destroyed the trusting relationship between facilitator and child and that all the children in all of the studies failed to communicate only because they had lost confidence. Interestingly, this did not stop them from communicating about the stimuli they did not see - the stimuli shown to the facilitator.
In the face of all this evidence one might have thought that the craze for FC would die down - but it did not (Students of Social Psychology should not be surprised. Many groups holding to beliefs tend to become even more strident in the statement of and propagation of their beliefs in the face of disconfirming evidence. See Festinger et al 1956).
A recent article (Jacobson et al 1995) cites a number of reasons for people holding on to these beliefs. These include:
-Parents and teachers motivations to obtain for their children the best and most effective services available for children with disabilities. This makes them vulnerable to the false and magical promise of dubious therapeutic techniques.
-The despondency of Parents and teachers when faced with their children's disabilities and the very slow, minimal, and painstakingly gotten progress offered by the standard treatment methods. Promises of quick "Magic cures" are especially attractive to people who are prone to helplessness and despair. Thus, they say, "'Fad' treatments offer hope when all other treatments seem less providential."
ISRAEL and the RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY:
Meanwhile, in Israel, Jewish religious proponents of the method were offered an additional reason to hold on to FC - and this reason drove it to the extremes of credulity.
FC was imported to Israel by a couple of special education teachers who had traveled to Syracuse and taken workshops with Biklen. In Israel the method really took off! It was widely adopted for use with all kinds of children. And then came a windfall - an occurrence which was quickly reported to Jewish communities around the globe via fax and other means of communication (Tel-a-Yid). U'maaseh shehaya kach haya - here's the story!
In B'nai Braq, a teacher who worked with two Autistic children received a communication from them via FC asking her to take them to see a well known Mekubal (mystic) in the city! The teacher was amazed at how these youngsters could know about this mekubal, where would they have heard of her father?!? She asked the mekubal to see them and he did (On Erev Rosh Hashana). During this visit with the mekubal, the mekubal asked the children many questions, why did they wish to see him? who were they? how could he help them? etc. With the help of their teacher as facilitator, the children told the mekubal that they were "Gilgulim" (souls reincarnated in the bodies of these Autistic children to atone for grave sins which they had committed in previous lives) and sought peace for their souls. They related the grave sins they had committed (but only partially), cried much, and finally stopped communicating. The Mekubal was very impressed with this encounter and wrote a letter attesting to what he had observed. He noted that whereas the facilitator was deeply engrossed in the communication board, the children barely looked at it. He saw no problem in this, explaining that the children were looking directly with the "eyes of the soul", thereby bypassing the physical eyes. The Mekubal gave credence to this phenomenon, saw it as consistent with his learning and his beliefs, and said that he is writing the letter so that people take to heart this message from the spiritual world which we have been privileged to witness.
The Mekubal's letter had wide ranging repercussions. Everywhere in the Jewish world the popular press ran articles heralding this "window to the soul" (see for example Weil 1993, Kahn, 1993, Hamodiah 5753).
Subsequently, in Jerusalem, a pamphlet entitled, "And I will place my Spirit in Thee" - What does the soul say?! was published lauding the phenomenon of FC, hailing it as a revelation of prophetic (or almost prophetic) proportions by which our generation is being sent a message from above. In this pamphlet, which saw wide distribution and acceptance in the religious community, there are reports of FC success with "blind children with brain damage"(who cannot see the communication board), with "people who are unconscious or in a vegetative state" (who can neither see the communication board, or move their hands independently), as well as with children who are deaf (and can answer questions which they haven't heard). Actually Jerusalem and Bnei Braq are not the first places where such fantastic stories were told. In Melbourne, also, the courts investigating the use of FC found that it had been used with patients in vegetative states who could not have made the movement to communicate on their own.
The logic of this pamphlet follows the circular logic outlined above, albeit with the addition of a Holy Ghost. The main points are as follows:
This then allows them to accept as facts phenomena which run counter to all logic. Thus, we arrive at blind people who can see, deaf who can hear, and "patients in vegetative commas" who can type and communicate!
What hurts most, however, is to see this faulty and embarrassing illogic used to prove the existence of G-d. The writer of the aforementioned pamphlet writes on page 3: ....(FC) "gives us the opportunity of "seeing" the Shechina (G-dliness)"; and on page 10: "let us use this phenomenon to prove to all those whose faith is not strong enough that there is a creator who runs this world and watches over it". And on page 28: "We will clearly show all doubters that there is Judgement and that there is a Judge"3. The writer seems unaware that he is actually using Torah concepts (albeit twisted almost beyond recognition) to bolster the method of FC, rather than the other way around. (He came to instruct and left instructed). Can one conceive of a greater Chilul Hashem ?!!
This pamphlet gave further impetus to the craze - quality of FC. Future cataclysmic events were "foretold" by autistic children and groups of mekubalim gathered in prayer to avert the predicted event. Parents and grandparents declared that they were no longer offering prayers for the improvement of their autistic children, since they were after all perfectly holy souls. And a widespread rumor had it, that when a person went to ask a prominent Rav for advice, he was told to go and ask an autistic child via FC.
Eventually influential Rabbis of Bnei Braq and Jerusalem did issue a statement (Yated Ne'man 1994) in which the fantastic claims for FC were refuted and, in which parents are advised to use caution in use of the method. However, the method itself as a viable means of communication for disabled children was not challenged. Thus, the circular seems to have had a minimal effect only.
Some Basic Ideas regarding Torah and Science:
The world contains in it "natural facts". The interpretation of facts is always made from the perspective of the underlying assumptions and biases which the scientist brings to the task. Thus, for us as Jews to understand what these facts say to us, what they teach us, and how we are to understand them, we need Torah and the clear perception of the Torah Scholar who can interpret the facts of nature from a pure Torah perspective unencumbered by values and philosophical biases which come from sources foreign to Torah. This is what I understand the Talmud to be saying when it tells us:
If a man tells you there is wisdom amongst the nations - believe him
(but if he tells you) there is Torah amongst the nations - do not believe him.
In other words, the establishment of facts in our natural/physical world may be done via the accepted and tested methods of the scientific community. However, any interpretation of, or teachings dictated by these facts requires a Torah perspective. This is so because as aforementioned, no interpretation is free of fundamental (always ultimately unproven) first assumptions and "self evident truths". And we can accept "self evident truths" only from Torah.
Thus, I am ready (and perhaps am often obligated) to investigate all reported natural phenomena and to ascertain their truth using the methods of science. However I will not and may not grant "acceptance on faith" to any phenomenon which is not found in Torat Moshe.
When a new discovery is reported, announced and heralded, we naturally seek a Torah perspective regarding our understanding and interpretation of this new phenomenon. It is important (even if seemingly superfluous) to note that before one can offer Torah interpretations of the new phenomenon, one must first ascertain whether it is indeed real, i.e. whether it actually exists. Any interpretation given to a nonexisting event will perforce be erroneous. Unfortunately, given the evidence, FC qualifies as such a "nonexisting" event.
It is a well known dictum to any student of Talmud that the sages did not debate matters of existence. In matters of factual and physical existence they would leave the Beis Hamidrash to empirically "check it out". Thus (to cite only one example) the Amora Rav spent 18 months with a shepherd in order to learn which blemishes in an animal should be considered transient and which permanent (thus disqualifying it for sacrifice in the Beis Hamikdash) (Sanhedrin 5b, and see Levi, Yehuda 1981).
Science, much more than a field with content, is an approach to establishing knowledge, facts and phenomena in the physical world and to find the relationship between such phenomena when they exist. Science has nothing to say about the meta-physical. That is simply beyond its scope, and it doesn't try to (Albeit there have been many misguided scientists over the years who have made foolish statements about the metaphysical - forgetting the self imposed limits of their calling - the empirical study of that which can be empirically studied.)
The methods of Scientific Research are based on a number of basic fundamental principles which have been derived from logic and from years of experience in the examination of "facts" .This experience has taught scientists to beware of certain errors and to build into their research safeguards against these errors. This, so they not find themselves accepting that which doesn't exist, or rejecting that which does.
In the following lines we will touch on some of these principles. Understanding them will allow us to better understand the danger in ignoring these safeguards to establishing fact.4
BURDEN OF PROOF: In Science the burden of proof rests on those introducing a novel theory or phenomenon; a fact becomes a scientific fact only when it has been proven to be true. It is not the responsibility, nor is it within the realm of science to prove that things are not true. Similarly, in the Talmud we find that we assume a Status Quo (Chazaka) to continue so long as we have no reason to believe that it has changed. The burden of proof is on the one arguing against the existing Status Quo.(e.g. Babylonian Talmud Baba Metziah 76a). In the same vein, anyone wishing to introduce a "chumra" (stringency) in Halacha carries the burden of proof (Mishna Yodayim 4-3). And in fact, statements for which no proof is offered are often dismissed by the (disparaging) remark, "These are nothing but words of prophecy" (e.g. Babylonian Talmud Baba Bathra 12a).
ANECDOTAL REPORTS as EVIDENCE: Science cannot accept anecdotal reports as proof of a phenomenon or of the efficacy of a method, especially when the circumstances surrounding that anecdote are less than clear. Thus, it is impossible to establish a fact when it is unclear under what circumstances that fact occurred. The Talmud states a similar principle when it states that "One cannot learn (a Halacha) from an anecdote" (Babylonian Talmud Tractate Baba Bathra 130b, see also Tosfos Baba Bathra 83a) i.e. it is not possible to establish a Halacha based on an anecdote about a great man having behaved in a certain way because we are not and cannot be aware of all of the circumstances surrounding that occurrence.
In a Scientific research program or report, all variables must be clearly and precisely defined. It is impossible to properly investigate a phenomenon without a precise definition of it. For example, when speaking of a medicine and whether it will help a patient, it is crucial that all details about the patient, his diagnosis, and dosage be clearly defined. It is also important to state what we mean when we say that the patient "improved" - by what measures, and who took the measures. It is impossible to arrive at any conclusions about a procedure or medication if these and many more factors are not clearly defined. It would be wrong to test a procedure with one patient who is at one level of illness and then to generalize and use the same medication with other patients indiscriminately.
PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF PHENOMENA: Although Science is in the business of establishing the existence of facts it cannot really negate the existence of a phenomenon. The best science can do is to say we have not been able to find this phenomenon to exist (which is not the same as saying it does not exist). As the Talmud says, "A statement to the effect that I haven't seen an event is not proof of its not having occurred" (Babylonian Talmud Kethubot 23a).
CONTRADICTORY EVIDENCE: Science can weaken the accepted truth of a phenomenon and maybe even negate it when it finds phenomena which stand in direct contradiction to the first (proposed) phenomenon. In the Talmud, a m'aaseh listor (Babylonian Talmud Berachot 16b).
INTELLECTUAL HONESTY (especially in the face of "contradictory evidence": Science may not and cannot afford to ignore contradictory evidence. If we are not to arrive at false conclusions we must be deal with such evidence. Either the findings can be understood within the existing theoretical framework, or else, the theory needs to be revised. Contradictory information cannot simply be ignored or "explained-away" with a illogical arguments or with a "flick of the wrist". This is expressed in the Mishna (Talmud, Avot - Ethics of the Fathers 5 -7) "A wise man.... admits the truth - even though he could maintain his own position by arguments available to him - (Rav Obadiah of Bartenura) ....and the reverse is characteristic of an uncultured/uneducated man"5.
Science is SKEPTICAL and SUSPICIOUS when it comes to establishing NEW PHENOMENA. It will not accept a phenomenon which has not been proven to exist. Science is even more skeptical when the reported phenomenon runs counter to all expectations and logic based on current knowledge. It is not that current knowledge decides the truth and the acceptance of a phenomenon and theory. However, when a phenomenon or theory runs counter to the current accepted wisdom it is certainly in the category of a great novelty - a surprising finding. As such it will be subjected to very careful scrutiny. As a great scientist once said, "Never trust a fact without a good theory to back it up". Again, we find in Torah a similar sentiment. The Talmudic sages statement upon hearing a novel report of a Halacha -"I haven't heard it, meaning it doesn't make sense to me!" Rashi explains this to mean: Even if you will bring me anecdotal proof to this, if it runs counter to logic, I will not accept it (Babylonian Talmud Eiruvin 102b, Baba Bathra 82b RaShBaM?). Furthermore a Halacha which has very unique and novel characteristics cannot be generalized from (Jerusalem Talmud, Trumah Ch. 7)
Facilitated Communication simply does not meet the criteria for established and accepted fact. It is counter-intuitive and has no theoretical base to support it. The "research" reported by its adherents, upon whom the burden of proof lies, is not clearly reported. Its variables, procedures and the diagnoses of the clients are also not clearly reported. The success of FC is based entirely on anecdotal reports, and its purported successes with some children have been indiscriminately generalized to working with others. On top of that, those who have taken the time and made the effort to carefully investigate the method have found evidence contradictory to its claims. It should therefore be abandoned.
The Damage done by the acceptance of the method without proof:
Many people ask: What of it? What and whom does it hurt when people accept and adopt a method like this without conclusive evidence? After all, even if it cannot help, can it hurt? Unfortunately, while it may not help, it can, and already has, hurt children, their parents, and their families.
Thus;
Professionals working with the disabled have a responsibility to get the best professional training they can, and to learn how to tell fact from fiction, as well as real help from what's faddish. As Jews I feel we have a special responsibility to remain an AM SEGULAH and beware of becoming merely an AM SHEL SGULOT.
Bibliography for Article on Facilitated Communication
Biklen, D. (1992a) Typing to Talk: Facilitated Communication, American Journal of Speech and Language Pathology, 1(2), 15-17
Biklen D. (1992b Summer) Questions and Answers on FC, The Advocate, Newsletter of the Autism Society of America, 16-18
Biklen, D. (1990) Communication Unbound: Autism and Praxis, Harvard Educational Review, 60, 291-314
Biklen, D. Memo to Parents, Teachers, speech therapists, and others interested in facilitated communication Re: Proof that the Person is communicating for him or herself.
Biklen, D., Morton, M., Gold, D., Berrigan, C., & Swaminathan, S. (1992) Facilitated Communication: Implications for individuals with autism. Topics in Language Disorders 12 (4) 1-28
Bligh, Sally & Kupperman, Phyllis, 1993, Facilitated Communication Evaluation Procedure accepted in court case, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Vol 23(3), 553-557
Calculator, S.N. Perhaps the Emperor has clothes after all: A response to Biklen, American Journal of Speech and Language Pathology 1992, 1(2) 18-20
Calculator, S.N. Facilitated Communication: Calculator responds, American Journal of Speech and Language Pathology 1992, 1(2) 23-24
Chadwick, Marilyn, 1993 Facilitated Communication Workshop Materials
Crossley, Rosemary, (1980), Annie's coming out, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books
Crossley, Rosemary, Using Facilitation to Improve Communication Aid Access, 1993 Second Conference (May 17 & 18) Facilitated Communication Institute, Syracuse University
Cummins, R.A. & Prior, M.P. 1992, Autism and Facilitated Communication, A Reply to Biklen, Harvard Educational Review, 62, 228-241
DEAL Communication Centre Staff 1992, Facilitated Communication Training
DEAL Communication Staff, 1992 Getting The Message
Delacato, C.H. (1966), Neurological organization and reading, Springfield, ILL. Charles c> Thomas.
Doman, G. (1974), What to do about your brain-injured child, Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday
Eberlin, Michael, McConnachie, Gene, Ibel, Stuart, and Volpe, Lisa, "Facilitated Communication" A Failure to Replicate The Phenomenon, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 1993, Vol. 23,(3) 507-530
Ernstoff, Sara-Rivka, Homeopathy Makes a Comeback, The Jewish Homemaker, Vol. 27 (4) 36-38,50-51
Festinger, Leon, Riecken, Henry W., Schachter, Stanley (1956) When Prophecy Fails, University of Minnesota Press
Hamodiah, 1992 The Autistic wall of Silence - Shattered ! 24 Cheshvan 5753
Intellectual Disability Review Panel, Investigation into the Reliability and Validity of the Assisted Communication Technique 1989, Melbourne, Victoria, Aus: Victoria Community Services
Interdisciplinary Working Party on Issues in Severe Communication Impairment, 1988, DEAL communication center operations,: A Statement of Concern, Melbourne, Victoria, Aus.
Jacobson, John W., Eberlin, Michael, Mulick, James A., Schwartz, Allen A., Szempruch, Joseph, & Wheeler, Douglas L. Autism, Facilitated Communication, and Future Directions. In Matson J.L. (Ed.) Autism in Children and Adults, Etiology, assessment, and intervention, pp. 59-83 New York, Brooke/Cole.
Jacobson, J.W. & Ackerman, L.J. Differences in Adaptive Functioning among people with autism or mental retardation, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 20, 1990, 205-219
Jacobson, John W., Mulick, James A., & Schwartz, Allen A. A History of Facilitated Communication: Science, Pseudoscience, and Antiscience, American Psychologist, Vol. 50 (9) September 1995, 750-765
Kahn, Henri, Le Message Des Autistes, Kountrass, No. 39, March-April 1993 5-9, Paris, France
Kahn, Henri, Le Message Des Autistes (complement d'information), Kountrass, No. 40, May-June 1993 53- 55, Paris, France
Mulick, James A., Jacobson, John W., & Kobe Frank H. Anguished Silence and Helping Hands: Miracles in Autism with Facilitated Communication, The Skeptical Inquirer, Official Publication of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
Schubert, Annegret Facilitated Communication; Introduction, Adriane Foundation, (undated)
Silver, L.B. (1987) The "magic cure": Areview of the current controversial approaches to the treatment of learning disabilities, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 20, 498-504
Soloveitchik, Rabbi J.B. Halacha, Aggadah, and Kabbalah, in Blau, Alter (Robert) Efneh V'Eshneh, Yeshiva University Press 1995
Szempruch, Joseph, & Jacobson, John W. 1992, Evaluating facilitated communication of people with developmental disabilities, Rome, NY: Rome Developmental Disabilities Services Office
Weil, Judith, Facilitated Communication, The Jewish Tribune, Thursday, July 1, 1993 Pg 11, London, England
Wheeler, D.L., Jacobson,J.W., Paglieri, R.A., & Schwartz, A.A., An Experimental assessment of facilitated communication, Publication of Autism Program of the O.D. Heck Developmental Center/Eleanor Roosevelt District Development Services Office. Pp. 1-25 (later published in Mental Retardation 31, 1993, 49-60)
Wolfensberger, (1992 Oct.) The Facilitated Communication Craze, TIPS (Training Institute for Human Service Planning, Leadership, & Change Agency Vol 12 (2&3)
Yated Ne'man/ Yated HaShavua, A Sharp Criticism of Pamphlets seeking to "strengthen faith" by misleading the public and by the exploitation of the handicapped by the irresponsible use of a professional technology (Heb) April 8, 1994, Pg 14
1 I once observed a public figure who paid a number of newspapers to run as factual articles press releases and depictions of his person and his institutions which he himself had written with his staff. I was astounded to see him and his family gathered around the newspapers the next day, oohing and aahing about the beautiful things written about them. They were not only impressed with the articles, they learned from them. They arrived at conclusions about themselves and made plans based upon what the papers said would be.
2 While in Jerusalem in the summer of 1994 I had the opportunity to test a child working with his facilitator, a teacher I knew. This teacher claimed to have been working with the child for about a half year with great results. She was convinced he could read and write. She acquiesced to the testing, noting however, that she saw no reason for it. Using the basic paradigm reported in the published research, we obtained the same results. What was amazing however was watching the total unawareness of the teacher/facilitator of what she was doing. Thus, at one point the child refused to allow her to hold his hand for communication purposes. Instead, he grabbed her hand. At that point she said to him, "Oh, you'd like to type with my hand? OK, that's perfectly all right. We'll ask you questions and you push my hand to the right answers." Thus, they began to type. The child being erratic was not consistent in holding onto the facilitator's hand, at times he'd leave go. It was truly amazing to note that the facilitator was so engrossed in the board that she was oblivious to the child's having let go of her hand, and continued typing "his" communications !
3 The logic and ambiguity of his reports serve only to increase the chilul Hashem. For example, he reports all sort of statements made by children from irreligious homes regarding G-d and their fear of punishment. Many of these statements include derogatory remarks about their non-observant parents. The pamphleteer expresses amazement at non-Dati children communicating religious concepts they had never been taught. What he fails to tell us is whether the facilitators were also non-dati (irreligious). I suspect not. And if I'm right, who is sending the message? And, who allowed these facilitators and the pamphleteer to hurt the parents of these children the way they have, by putting such hurtful words into their children's mouths (excuse me, hands)? Who permitted them to spill the blood of the parents of these children just because they were non-dati ?!!?
4 The basic idea of Halacha as an "empirical" and logical field of inquiry has already been stated by Rav Soloveitchik Zatsal (see Soloveitchik, Rabbi J.B. cited in Blau, 1995)
5 It is unfortunate that the proponents of FC fail to share and to adhere to the basic values and principles outlined above. They do not even value basic intellectual Honesty. One of the proponents of FC visited a school in Europe for Special Children which I consult to. She tried to convince them to include FC in their program. The administrators of the school replied that they would be willing to consider adopting the method, but would like to see some of the research literature on the method which they would forward to their consultant. The proponent submitted an article for my perusal (Biklen 1992). Imagine my surprise and sense of frustration when I realized that the article submitted was one of a series of three articles meant to look at the issue from the side of proponents and critics. She had conveniently ignored the article citing the criticisms of the method (Calculator 1992a & b) !!!
For example, during a session, while the facilitator is very engrossed and intent on paying attention to the communication board, the children are often observed to be looking at anything but the board. Nevertheless, the typing continues! This becomes even more incredulous when hand held boards are used. In these situations, the board which is being held by the facilitator and the very active child is moving erratically in the air. Yet again, without the child looking at the board, the typing continues! Proponents claim that the children know the board by heart and have tremendous perceptual and perceptual-motor abilities which allow them to type without even seeing the (moving) board.
The facilitators have also been observed to be so engrossed in the board that they often ignored, or failed to hear the child's correct verbal response to the question being asked.
While the decoding of the child's communication is slow and tedious (and often impossible) for outside observers, it comes quickly and automatically to the facilitators. The facilitators explain this by their knowing the child and being more familiar with his communication style. A more likely explanation may be that they can quickly decode the messages because the messages are their own - the facilitator's that is.
Also cited as a proof for FC (reported in Jacobson, Eberlin, Mulick, Schwartz, Szempruch, & Wheeler 1994) are reports that the child often uses FC to communicate very specific and accurate information which is known only to the facilitator, such as personal information about the facilitator. This is explained by attributing to the client/children - the power of telepathy. This proof for the power of telepathy in Autistic children because they communicate information known only to their facilitator should be seen as a negative proof - against FC. It is much more parsimonious and logical to explain this phenomenon by saying that this information was communicated by the facilitator and not by the child!
A poor mode of Reasoning
This last phenomenon - the use of "telepathy" to explain strange findings, and consequently, to use this explanation as a perverse "proof" for FC - is characteristic of the mode of thinking engaged in by many of the proponents of FC.
- First, they accept FC as real on an a priori basis.
- Then they explain its workings by the use of a meta-physical explanations, at the same time granting the method these meta-physical powers.
- Having endowed the method with special powers, they then "spread the gospel." In a short time, these "new powers" become part of the accepted and unquestioned lore surrounding the method.
- With this now newly empowered method, the proponents have enabled themselves to accept and integrate even phenomena which otherwise might be seen as refutations of the method.
- But that's not enough! The contradictory evidence is now cited as actually proving and supporting use of the method. They conveniently forget to mention or even to remember that the explanation is based on a first-assumption which they created but never bothered to check out! 1
When in Melbourne in August of 1994, I visited Rosemary Crossley at the DEAL Center. Crossley distanced herself from the claims of telepathy in FC and also stated that if the child was not looking at the board, he could not be considered to be communicating via FC. However observing her and an assistant working with two adolescents, whose exact diagnosis it was difficult to get, I did see some of the other phenomena reported above - thus correct verbal communications of the boys were ignored while they were being coerced to answer using the communication board! When I asked Crossley about the contradictory research results reported below, she had no real answers. She did assert that it takes many months of training to be a real facilitator, suggesting that the facilitators in the research studies were not sufficiently trained. However Biklen is known to train facilitators in as little as three hour sessions with, according to subsequent reports, truly "unbelievable" results!
The Research
The last few years have seen a number of empirical research studies conducted on this phenomenon. These were first instigated by the courts in Australia (Interdisciplinary Working Party 1988, Intellectual Disability Review Panel 1989) after a number of parents were charged with physical and sexual child abuse based on communications made by their autistic and retarded children via FC. The courts could not convict based on these communications without verification of their veracity. They therefore ordered investigations of the phenomenon (which had to be carried out without the cooperation of Rosemary Crossley and her DEAL Communication center - they claimed an investigation of the method would destroy the children's ability to communicate). In the United States, the courts (Bligh 1993) as well as a number of independent investigators in various clinical and university settings also undertook investigations. These investigations and their results are reviewed at length in readily available sources (referenced below). I will, therefore, limit myself to a very general review of the bare essentials of the research design and the findings, leaving it to the interested reader to go to the referenced sources for more detail.
The essential designs of the research studies are relatively straightforward and simple.
A. Create a condition in which questions can be asked of the child, pictures can be shown to him (which he is to name via FC), or messages conveyed to him such that the facilitator does not see or hear the stimulus/message sent to the child.
The child's Facilitated Communications in the above condition are then compared to the child's communications during standard FC procedures when both the facilitator and the child receive the same stimuli.
or
B. Present both the child and the facilitator with stimuli (questions or pictures) to which the child is to respond.
- On some trials present both the child and the facilitator with identical stimuli.
- On other trials present the child and the facilitator with different stimuli.
(The facilitator should of course not be aware of when the stimuli are identical or different.)
Then compare the child's Facilitated Communications in the two conditions.
The research results of close to 30 different studies in both Australia and the United States (reviewed in Jacobson, Mulick, & Schwartz 1995, and in greater detail in Jacobson, Eberlin, Mulick, Schwartz, Szempruch, & Wheeler 1994) are essentially as follows.
- When the stimuli were seen by both the facilitator and the child, the responses were very often correct (23% of the time)
- When the facilitator did not see the stimulus shown to the child, the responses were almost never correct (or correct at a below chance level) More often they were either incorrect or mere gibberish.
- When different stimuli were presented to the child and the facilitator, the responses were either gibberish or incorrect for the stimuli shown to the child, but 20% of the time were correct responses to the stimuli which had been shown to the facilitator!
Thus, children were shown to be unable to respond to stimuli which the facilitator had not seen and a good deal of the time responded to the stimuli shown to the facilitator. In at least one study (Wheeler, Jacobson, Paglieri, & Schwartz 1993) it was shown that a number of clients who had been facilitated by the same facilitator tended to have similar "response styles." Who then is sending the messages?!!
These results were found in controlled study after controlled study. These studies were also extremely careful in defining the diagnosis of the child, the qualifications of the facilitator, the conditions of the study and the communications. They were also extremely liberal in accepting questionable responses as positive examples of FC. Alas, to no avail. Not even one controlled study was able to demonstrate better communication with FC than without it (a very few children who had some verbal and/or typing skills did communicate successfully via FC - but no more successfully than they could without FC). Thus the "unexpected literacy" claimed to have been found by the proponents of FC did not materialize. (Interestingly, in at least one of the studies (Eberlin, McConnachie, Ibel, & Volpe 1993), the facilitators did report instances of "unexpected literacy" during their informal practice sessions with the clients. However, these occurrences did not appear in either previous or subsequent controlled settings).
Both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the results thus demonstrated facilitator influence. However, in all the studies the facilitators were clearly unaware of their unconscious influence on the communications2. This seems surprising to most people, but not to those familiar with other instances in which people fail to perceive their active influence over physical interaction or language production, such as in the use of Ouija boards and channeling (Hall 1993).
The proponents of FC held on to the argument that the testing destroyed the trusting relationship between facilitator and child and that all the children in all of the studies failed to communicate only because they had lost confidence. Interestingly, this did not stop them from communicating about the stimuli they did not see - the stimuli shown to the facilitator.
In the face of all this evidence one might have thought that the craze for FC would die down - but it did not (Students of Social Psychology should not be surprised. Many groups holding to beliefs tend to become even more strident in the statement of and propagation of their beliefs in the face of disconfirming evidence. See Festinger et al 1956).
A recent article (Jacobson et al 1995) cites a number of reasons for people holding on to these beliefs. These include:
-Parents and teachers motivations to obtain for their children the best and most effective services available for children with disabilities. This makes them vulnerable to the false and magical promise of dubious therapeutic techniques.
-The despondency of Parents and teachers when faced with their children's disabilities and the very slow, minimal, and painstakingly gotten progress offered by the standard treatment methods. Promises of quick "Magic cures" are especially attractive to people who are prone to helplessness and despair. Thus, they say, "'Fad' treatments offer hope when all other treatments seem less providential."
ISRAEL and the RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY:
Meanwhile, in Israel, Jewish religious proponents of the method were offered an additional reason to hold on to FC - and this reason drove it to the extremes of credulity.
FC was imported to Israel by a couple of special education teachers who had traveled to Syracuse and taken workshops with Biklen. In Israel the method really took off! It was widely adopted for use with all kinds of children. And then came a windfall - an occurrence which was quickly reported to Jewish communities around the globe via fax and other means of communication (Tel-a-Yid). U'maaseh shehaya kach haya - here's the story!
In B'nai Braq, a teacher who worked with two Autistic children received a communication from them via FC asking her to take them to see a well known Mekubal (mystic) in the city! The teacher was amazed at how these youngsters could know about this mekubal, where would they have heard of her father?!? She asked the mekubal to see them and he did (On Erev Rosh Hashana). During this visit with the mekubal, the mekubal asked the children many questions, why did they wish to see him? who were they? how could he help them? etc. With the help of their teacher as facilitator, the children told the mekubal that they were "Gilgulim" (souls reincarnated in the bodies of these Autistic children to atone for grave sins which they had committed in previous lives) and sought peace for their souls. They related the grave sins they had committed (but only partially), cried much, and finally stopped communicating. The Mekubal was very impressed with this encounter and wrote a letter attesting to what he had observed. He noted that whereas the facilitator was deeply engrossed in the communication board, the children barely looked at it. He saw no problem in this, explaining that the children were looking directly with the "eyes of the soul", thereby bypassing the physical eyes. The Mekubal gave credence to this phenomenon, saw it as consistent with his learning and his beliefs, and said that he is writing the letter so that people take to heart this message from the spiritual world which we have been privileged to witness.
The Mekubal's letter had wide ranging repercussions. Everywhere in the Jewish world the popular press ran articles heralding this "window to the soul" (see for example Weil 1993, Kahn, 1993, Hamodiah 5753).
Subsequently, in Jerusalem, a pamphlet entitled, "And I will place my Spirit in Thee" - What does the soul say?! was published lauding the phenomenon of FC, hailing it as a revelation of prophetic (or almost prophetic) proportions by which our generation is being sent a message from above. In this pamphlet, which saw wide distribution and acceptance in the religious community, there are reports of FC success with "blind children with brain damage"(who cannot see the communication board), with "people who are unconscious or in a vegetative state" (who can neither see the communication board, or move their hands independently), as well as with children who are deaf (and can answer questions which they haven't heard). Actually Jerusalem and Bnei Braq are not the first places where such fantastic stories were told. In Melbourne, also, the courts investigating the use of FC found that it had been used with patients in vegetative states who could not have made the movement to communicate on their own.
The logic of this pamphlet follows the circular logic outlined above, albeit with the addition of a Holy Ghost. The main points are as follows:
- It is taken as axiomatic that revelation from the spiritual world is present in some form in every generation.
- FC as having worked with some child (whose diagnosis is not clearly defined) is accepted as a fact.
- The workings of FC with that child are explained as being a direct message from the soul.
- Once we are dealing with the soul we can explain any and all strange phenomena reported by users of the method, even the most bizarre, as being direct communications from the soul (which can rise above and bypass the limitations of the body).
This then allows them to accept as facts phenomena which run counter to all logic. Thus, we arrive at blind people who can see, deaf who can hear, and "patients in vegetative commas" who can type and communicate!
What hurts most, however, is to see this faulty and embarrassing illogic used to prove the existence of G-d. The writer of the aforementioned pamphlet writes on page 3: ....(FC) "gives us the opportunity of "seeing" the Shechina (G-dliness)"; and on page 10: "let us use this phenomenon to prove to all those whose faith is not strong enough that there is a creator who runs this world and watches over it". And on page 28: "We will clearly show all doubters that there is Judgement and that there is a Judge"3. The writer seems unaware that he is actually using Torah concepts (albeit twisted almost beyond recognition) to bolster the method of FC, rather than the other way around. (He came to instruct and left instructed). Can one conceive of a greater Chilul Hashem ?!!
This pamphlet gave further impetus to the craze - quality of FC. Future cataclysmic events were "foretold" by autistic children and groups of mekubalim gathered in prayer to avert the predicted event. Parents and grandparents declared that they were no longer offering prayers for the improvement of their autistic children, since they were after all perfectly holy souls. And a widespread rumor had it, that when a person went to ask a prominent Rav for advice, he was told to go and ask an autistic child via FC.
Eventually influential Rabbis of Bnei Braq and Jerusalem did issue a statement (Yated Ne'man 1994) in which the fantastic claims for FC were refuted and, in which parents are advised to use caution in use of the method. However, the method itself as a viable means of communication for disabled children was not challenged. Thus, the circular seems to have had a minimal effect only.
Some Basic Ideas regarding Torah and Science:
The world contains in it "natural facts". The interpretation of facts is always made from the perspective of the underlying assumptions and biases which the scientist brings to the task. Thus, for us as Jews to understand what these facts say to us, what they teach us, and how we are to understand them, we need Torah and the clear perception of the Torah Scholar who can interpret the facts of nature from a pure Torah perspective unencumbered by values and philosophical biases which come from sources foreign to Torah. This is what I understand the Talmud to be saying when it tells us:
If a man tells you there is wisdom amongst the nations - believe him
(but if he tells you) there is Torah amongst the nations - do not believe him.
In other words, the establishment of facts in our natural/physical world may be done via the accepted and tested methods of the scientific community. However, any interpretation of, or teachings dictated by these facts requires a Torah perspective. This is so because as aforementioned, no interpretation is free of fundamental (always ultimately unproven) first assumptions and "self evident truths". And we can accept "self evident truths" only from Torah.
Thus, I am ready (and perhaps am often obligated) to investigate all reported natural phenomena and to ascertain their truth using the methods of science. However I will not and may not grant "acceptance on faith" to any phenomenon which is not found in Torat Moshe.
When a new discovery is reported, announced and heralded, we naturally seek a Torah perspective regarding our understanding and interpretation of this new phenomenon. It is important (even if seemingly superfluous) to note that before one can offer Torah interpretations of the new phenomenon, one must first ascertain whether it is indeed real, i.e. whether it actually exists. Any interpretation given to a nonexisting event will perforce be erroneous. Unfortunately, given the evidence, FC qualifies as such a "nonexisting" event.
It is a well known dictum to any student of Talmud that the sages did not debate matters of existence. In matters of factual and physical existence they would leave the Beis Hamidrash to empirically "check it out". Thus (to cite only one example) the Amora Rav spent 18 months with a shepherd in order to learn which blemishes in an animal should be considered transient and which permanent (thus disqualifying it for sacrifice in the Beis Hamikdash) (Sanhedrin 5b, and see Levi, Yehuda 1981).
Science, much more than a field with content, is an approach to establishing knowledge, facts and phenomena in the physical world and to find the relationship between such phenomena when they exist. Science has nothing to say about the meta-physical. That is simply beyond its scope, and it doesn't try to (Albeit there have been many misguided scientists over the years who have made foolish statements about the metaphysical - forgetting the self imposed limits of their calling - the empirical study of that which can be empirically studied.)
The methods of Scientific Research are based on a number of basic fundamental principles which have been derived from logic and from years of experience in the examination of "facts" .This experience has taught scientists to beware of certain errors and to build into their research safeguards against these errors. This, so they not find themselves accepting that which doesn't exist, or rejecting that which does.
In the following lines we will touch on some of these principles. Understanding them will allow us to better understand the danger in ignoring these safeguards to establishing fact.4
BURDEN OF PROOF: In Science the burden of proof rests on those introducing a novel theory or phenomenon; a fact becomes a scientific fact only when it has been proven to be true. It is not the responsibility, nor is it within the realm of science to prove that things are not true. Similarly, in the Talmud we find that we assume a Status Quo (Chazaka) to continue so long as we have no reason to believe that it has changed. The burden of proof is on the one arguing against the existing Status Quo.(e.g. Babylonian Talmud Baba Metziah 76a). In the same vein, anyone wishing to introduce a "chumra" (stringency) in Halacha carries the burden of proof (Mishna Yodayim 4-3). And in fact, statements for which no proof is offered are often dismissed by the (disparaging) remark, "These are nothing but words of prophecy" (e.g. Babylonian Talmud Baba Bathra 12a).
ANECDOTAL REPORTS as EVIDENCE: Science cannot accept anecdotal reports as proof of a phenomenon or of the efficacy of a method, especially when the circumstances surrounding that anecdote are less than clear. Thus, it is impossible to establish a fact when it is unclear under what circumstances that fact occurred. The Talmud states a similar principle when it states that "One cannot learn (a Halacha) from an anecdote" (Babylonian Talmud Tractate Baba Bathra 130b, see also Tosfos Baba Bathra 83a) i.e. it is not possible to establish a Halacha based on an anecdote about a great man having behaved in a certain way because we are not and cannot be aware of all of the circumstances surrounding that occurrence.
In a Scientific research program or report, all variables must be clearly and precisely defined. It is impossible to properly investigate a phenomenon without a precise definition of it. For example, when speaking of a medicine and whether it will help a patient, it is crucial that all details about the patient, his diagnosis, and dosage be clearly defined. It is also important to state what we mean when we say that the patient "improved" - by what measures, and who took the measures. It is impossible to arrive at any conclusions about a procedure or medication if these and many more factors are not clearly defined. It would be wrong to test a procedure with one patient who is at one level of illness and then to generalize and use the same medication with other patients indiscriminately.
PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF PHENOMENA: Although Science is in the business of establishing the existence of facts it cannot really negate the existence of a phenomenon. The best science can do is to say we have not been able to find this phenomenon to exist (which is not the same as saying it does not exist). As the Talmud says, "A statement to the effect that I haven't seen an event is not proof of its not having occurred" (Babylonian Talmud Kethubot 23a).
CONTRADICTORY EVIDENCE: Science can weaken the accepted truth of a phenomenon and maybe even negate it when it finds phenomena which stand in direct contradiction to the first (proposed) phenomenon. In the Talmud, a m'aaseh listor (Babylonian Talmud Berachot 16b).
INTELLECTUAL HONESTY (especially in the face of "contradictory evidence": Science may not and cannot afford to ignore contradictory evidence. If we are not to arrive at false conclusions we must be deal with such evidence. Either the findings can be understood within the existing theoretical framework, or else, the theory needs to be revised. Contradictory information cannot simply be ignored or "explained-away" with a illogical arguments or with a "flick of the wrist". This is expressed in the Mishna (Talmud, Avot - Ethics of the Fathers 5 -7) "A wise man.... admits the truth - even though he could maintain his own position by arguments available to him - (Rav Obadiah of Bartenura) ....and the reverse is characteristic of an uncultured/uneducated man"5.
Science is SKEPTICAL and SUSPICIOUS when it comes to establishing NEW PHENOMENA. It will not accept a phenomenon which has not been proven to exist. Science is even more skeptical when the reported phenomenon runs counter to all expectations and logic based on current knowledge. It is not that current knowledge decides the truth and the acceptance of a phenomenon and theory. However, when a phenomenon or theory runs counter to the current accepted wisdom it is certainly in the category of a great novelty - a surprising finding. As such it will be subjected to very careful scrutiny. As a great scientist once said, "Never trust a fact without a good theory to back it up". Again, we find in Torah a similar sentiment. The Talmudic sages statement upon hearing a novel report of a Halacha -"I haven't heard it, meaning it doesn't make sense to me!" Rashi explains this to mean: Even if you will bring me anecdotal proof to this, if it runs counter to logic, I will not accept it (Babylonian Talmud Eiruvin 102b, Baba Bathra 82b RaShBaM?). Furthermore a Halacha which has very unique and novel characteristics cannot be generalized from (Jerusalem Talmud, Trumah Ch. 7)
Facilitated Communication simply does not meet the criteria for established and accepted fact. It is counter-intuitive and has no theoretical base to support it. The "research" reported by its adherents, upon whom the burden of proof lies, is not clearly reported. Its variables, procedures and the diagnoses of the clients are also not clearly reported. The success of FC is based entirely on anecdotal reports, and its purported successes with some children have been indiscriminately generalized to working with others. On top of that, those who have taken the time and made the effort to carefully investigate the method have found evidence contradictory to its claims. It should therefore be abandoned.
The Damage done by the acceptance of the method without proof:
Many people ask: What of it? What and whom does it hurt when people accept and adopt a method like this without conclusive evidence? After all, even if it cannot help, can it hurt? Unfortunately, while it may not help, it can, and already has, hurt children, their parents, and their families.
Thus;
- Parents who hear that the child who they had believed to be of limited intelligence is actually of normal intelligence, if not a genius and a holy soul, become filled with guilt about all the things they might or might not have said in front of the child all these past years, thinking that he doesn't understand.
- Parents in a number of places around the world have been charged with child abuse (physical and sexual) based on communications made by Autistic children using FC. Children were removed from their parent's homes based on indictments which were based on these communications via FC. And even though, ultimately, no court of law saw it fit to give credence to these messages based on FC, the damage had been done; Families had been torn asunder, parents were broken emotionally and financially, when they had to pay legal fees to defend themselves. One family had to mortgage their home to pay their legal fees. Another man was ousted from his job when the charges were brought. Although the court vindicated him, he didn't get his job back.
- Parents who use FC tend to stop using other methods which are slower but more sure-footed in helping their children become more functional people. A pamphlet distributed at a FC workshop for teachers in Jerusalem advocates the adoption of FC for use "with any child with developmental aphasia or with language development below their chronological age" (that is, any child whose language is not well developed including children with learning disabilities). Thus, the use of F.C. has been extended for children with both greater and smaller problems than those with whom it was first developed.
- Those who work with the children using FC, often decide the child's program and make plans for him by asking for the child's opinion via FC. If what we are getting from FC is truly the child's communications, why that's great - true empowerment! However if it isn't the child's voice coming through; then we must ask who gave the facilitators the right to decide for them and to foster their ideas on the child as if they were his own !!
- Lately, there has been a tendency to give children IQ tests using FC as the communication medium. The results of these tests play a very central role in deciding the child's learning program and level of services that he will receive in school and from the state. Again, if the IQ score based on FC is meaningful, that's fine. But if not, then we may end up depriving the child of sorely needed services and instead place him in programs which will cater to someone else's fantasy of what he might need - but not to his actual needs !
- Parents hopes are falsely raised and, unfortunately, will in the end be dashed again. The proponents of FC, like the proponents of other Magic Cures, actively proselytize for its use. They verbally attack parents demanding they use the method with their child and, should they be hesitant, asking them what right they have to deny their children this wonderful cure. Like all true believers, they see every new child added to the fold as additional proof for their belief. All such Magic Cures are introduced with a "Bang!", amid lots of public relations hoopla and hype. Everybody gets caught up in the excitement. Unfortunately, soon enough, when the magic of the "cure" doesn't materialize, when the child does not improve, when his behavior remains as dysfunctional as it was before, the parents of these children silently abandon the "cure" and again become despondent. They do this quietly because they are broken people carrying a heavy burden to begin with. They often suffer from seeing their child's limitations as being somehow a reflection of their own imperfections. When the method does not work for their child their initial response is to blame not the inadequacy of the method, but rather the inadequacy of their child, and by extension of themselves (especially since there are still many others 'out there' singing the method's praises). Adherents give up the method quietly, one by one. The proponents can still gain adherents for a while, but as time goes on, less and less so. There will be no public announcement for the death of FC, it will die a slow death, but in the throes of its death it will hurt many parents and children, one at a time. I've seen this happen before with another magic cure [Doman (1974) & Delacato's (1966) "patterning"] and have already witnessed a couple of cases of broken parents who have used FC.
Professionals working with the disabled have a responsibility to get the best professional training they can, and to learn how to tell fact from fiction, as well as real help from what's faddish. As Jews I feel we have a special responsibility to remain an AM SEGULAH and beware of becoming merely an AM SHEL SGULOT.
Bibliography for Article on Facilitated Communication
Biklen, D. (1992a) Typing to Talk: Facilitated Communication, American Journal of Speech and Language Pathology, 1(2), 15-17
Biklen D. (1992b Summer) Questions and Answers on FC, The Advocate, Newsletter of the Autism Society of America, 16-18
Biklen, D. (1990) Communication Unbound: Autism and Praxis, Harvard Educational Review, 60, 291-314
Biklen, D. Memo to Parents, Teachers, speech therapists, and others interested in facilitated communication Re: Proof that the Person is communicating for him or herself.
Biklen, D., Morton, M., Gold, D., Berrigan, C., & Swaminathan, S. (1992) Facilitated Communication: Implications for individuals with autism. Topics in Language Disorders 12 (4) 1-28
Bligh, Sally & Kupperman, Phyllis, 1993, Facilitated Communication Evaluation Procedure accepted in court case, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Vol 23(3), 553-557
Calculator, S.N. Perhaps the Emperor has clothes after all: A response to Biklen, American Journal of Speech and Language Pathology 1992, 1(2) 18-20
Calculator, S.N. Facilitated Communication: Calculator responds, American Journal of Speech and Language Pathology 1992, 1(2) 23-24
Chadwick, Marilyn, 1993 Facilitated Communication Workshop Materials
Crossley, Rosemary, (1980), Annie's coming out, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books
Crossley, Rosemary, Using Facilitation to Improve Communication Aid Access, 1993 Second Conference (May 17 & 18) Facilitated Communication Institute, Syracuse University
Cummins, R.A. & Prior, M.P. 1992, Autism and Facilitated Communication, A Reply to Biklen, Harvard Educational Review, 62, 228-241
DEAL Communication Centre Staff 1992, Facilitated Communication Training
DEAL Communication Staff, 1992 Getting The Message
Delacato, C.H. (1966), Neurological organization and reading, Springfield, ILL. Charles c> Thomas.
Doman, G. (1974), What to do about your brain-injured child, Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday
Eberlin, Michael, McConnachie, Gene, Ibel, Stuart, and Volpe, Lisa, "Facilitated Communication" A Failure to Replicate The Phenomenon, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 1993, Vol. 23,(3) 507-530
Ernstoff, Sara-Rivka, Homeopathy Makes a Comeback, The Jewish Homemaker, Vol. 27 (4) 36-38,50-51
Festinger, Leon, Riecken, Henry W., Schachter, Stanley (1956) When Prophecy Fails, University of Minnesota Press
Hamodiah, 1992 The Autistic wall of Silence - Shattered ! 24 Cheshvan 5753
Intellectual Disability Review Panel, Investigation into the Reliability and Validity of the Assisted Communication Technique 1989, Melbourne, Victoria, Aus: Victoria Community Services
Interdisciplinary Working Party on Issues in Severe Communication Impairment, 1988, DEAL communication center operations,: A Statement of Concern, Melbourne, Victoria, Aus.
Jacobson, John W., Eberlin, Michael, Mulick, James A., Schwartz, Allen A., Szempruch, Joseph, & Wheeler, Douglas L. Autism, Facilitated Communication, and Future Directions. In Matson J.L. (Ed.) Autism in Children and Adults, Etiology, assessment, and intervention, pp. 59-83 New York, Brooke/Cole.
Jacobson, J.W. & Ackerman, L.J. Differences in Adaptive Functioning among people with autism or mental retardation, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 20, 1990, 205-219
Jacobson, John W., Mulick, James A., & Schwartz, Allen A. A History of Facilitated Communication: Science, Pseudoscience, and Antiscience, American Psychologist, Vol. 50 (9) September 1995, 750-765
Kahn, Henri, Le Message Des Autistes, Kountrass, No. 39, March-April 1993 5-9, Paris, France
Kahn, Henri, Le Message Des Autistes (complement d'information), Kountrass, No. 40, May-June 1993 53- 55, Paris, France
Mulick, James A., Jacobson, John W., & Kobe Frank H. Anguished Silence and Helping Hands: Miracles in Autism with Facilitated Communication, The Skeptical Inquirer, Official Publication of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
Schubert, Annegret Facilitated Communication; Introduction, Adriane Foundation, (undated)
Silver, L.B. (1987) The "magic cure": Areview of the current controversial approaches to the treatment of learning disabilities, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 20, 498-504
Soloveitchik, Rabbi J.B. Halacha, Aggadah, and Kabbalah, in Blau, Alter (Robert) Efneh V'Eshneh, Yeshiva University Press 1995
Szempruch, Joseph, & Jacobson, John W. 1992, Evaluating facilitated communication of people with developmental disabilities, Rome, NY: Rome Developmental Disabilities Services Office
Weil, Judith, Facilitated Communication, The Jewish Tribune, Thursday, July 1, 1993 Pg 11, London, England
Wheeler, D.L., Jacobson,J.W., Paglieri, R.A., & Schwartz, A.A., An Experimental assessment of facilitated communication, Publication of Autism Program of the O.D. Heck Developmental Center/Eleanor Roosevelt District Development Services Office. Pp. 1-25 (later published in Mental Retardation 31, 1993, 49-60)
Wolfensberger, (1992 Oct.) The Facilitated Communication Craze, TIPS (Training Institute for Human Service Planning, Leadership, & Change Agency Vol 12 (2&3)
Yated Ne'man/ Yated HaShavua, A Sharp Criticism of Pamphlets seeking to "strengthen faith" by misleading the public and by the exploitation of the handicapped by the irresponsible use of a professional technology (Heb) April 8, 1994, Pg 14
1 I once observed a public figure who paid a number of newspapers to run as factual articles press releases and depictions of his person and his institutions which he himself had written with his staff. I was astounded to see him and his family gathered around the newspapers the next day, oohing and aahing about the beautiful things written about them. They were not only impressed with the articles, they learned from them. They arrived at conclusions about themselves and made plans based upon what the papers said would be.
2 While in Jerusalem in the summer of 1994 I had the opportunity to test a child working with his facilitator, a teacher I knew. This teacher claimed to have been working with the child for about a half year with great results. She was convinced he could read and write. She acquiesced to the testing, noting however, that she saw no reason for it. Using the basic paradigm reported in the published research, we obtained the same results. What was amazing however was watching the total unawareness of the teacher/facilitator of what she was doing. Thus, at one point the child refused to allow her to hold his hand for communication purposes. Instead, he grabbed her hand. At that point she said to him, "Oh, you'd like to type with my hand? OK, that's perfectly all right. We'll ask you questions and you push my hand to the right answers." Thus, they began to type. The child being erratic was not consistent in holding onto the facilitator's hand, at times he'd leave go. It was truly amazing to note that the facilitator was so engrossed in the board that she was oblivious to the child's having let go of her hand, and continued typing "his" communications !
3 The logic and ambiguity of his reports serve only to increase the chilul Hashem. For example, he reports all sort of statements made by children from irreligious homes regarding G-d and their fear of punishment. Many of these statements include derogatory remarks about their non-observant parents. The pamphleteer expresses amazement at non-Dati children communicating religious concepts they had never been taught. What he fails to tell us is whether the facilitators were also non-dati (irreligious). I suspect not. And if I'm right, who is sending the message? And, who allowed these facilitators and the pamphleteer to hurt the parents of these children the way they have, by putting such hurtful words into their children's mouths (excuse me, hands)? Who permitted them to spill the blood of the parents of these children just because they were non-dati ?!!?
4 The basic idea of Halacha as an "empirical" and logical field of inquiry has already been stated by Rav Soloveitchik Zatsal (see Soloveitchik, Rabbi J.B. cited in Blau, 1995)
5 It is unfortunate that the proponents of FC fail to share and to adhere to the basic values and principles outlined above. They do not even value basic intellectual Honesty. One of the proponents of FC visited a school in Europe for Special Children which I consult to. She tried to convince them to include FC in their program. The administrators of the school replied that they would be willing to consider adopting the method, but would like to see some of the research literature on the method which they would forward to their consultant. The proponent submitted an article for my perusal (Biklen 1992). Imagine my surprise and sense of frustration when I realized that the article submitted was one of a series of three articles meant to look at the issue from the side of proponents and critics. She had conveniently ignored the article citing the criticisms of the method (Calculator 1992a & b) !!!
