INVESTIGATION OF AUTHORSHIP IN FACILITATED COMMUNICATION

We examined whether facilitated communication users, under controlled condition, could transmit rudimentary information to a naive facilitat or. Forty-three students across 10 classrooms were shown a single rand omly selected word with their facilitator out of the room. The facilit ator then entered the room and asked the student to type the word, whi ch was recorded exactly as typed and later evaluated; approximately 3, 800 attempts were conducted over a 6-week period. Results showed that (a) under controlled conditions, some facilitated communication users can pass accurate information and (b) measurement of facilitated commu nication under test conditions may be significantly benefitted by exte nsive practice of the test protocol, which could partially account for the inability of several past studies to verify facilitated communica tion-user originated output.