An Examination of the Role of the Facilitator in “Facilitated Communication” 1

Facilitated communication (FC) is an expressive communication strategy that involves the selection of targets on a letter display or keyboard by an individual who receives some physical support, typically from another person (known as the facilitator). Because physical assistance is needed for communication to occur, the question has arisen as to whether the facilitator or the individual who is facilitated is responsible for authoring messages. This investigation was initiated to determine whether messages expressed via FC by a 38-year-old man who was nonspeaking and mentally retarded were produced by this individual or by his facilitator. In order to investigate the source of communication, three procedures were designed, two of a visual and one of an auditory nature. Results revealed that the source of the communication in this context was, without exception, the facilitator. These findings suggest the importance of determining the source of communication expressed through facilitated communication.

Haptic Dominance in Form Perception: Vision versus Proprioception

An experiment placed vision and touch in conflict by the use of a mirror placed perpendicular to a letter display. The mirror induced a discrepancy in direction and form. Subjects touched the embossed tangible letters p, q, b, d, W, and M, while looking at them in a mirror, and were asked to identify the letters. The upright mirror produced a vertical inversion of the letters, and visual inversion of the direction of finger movement. Thus, subjects touched the letter p, but saw themselves touching the letter b in the mirror. There were large individual differences in reliance on the senses. The majority of the subjects depended on touch, and only one showed visual dominance. Others showed a compromise between the senses. The results were consistent with an attentional explanation of intersensory dominance.

Classification without Identification in Visual Search

Six subjects scanned displays of random consonants for a single target which was (a) another consonant; (b) a given number; or (c) any number. A second group of six subjects took part in three comparable conditions with number displays, and letters or numbers as targets. Scanning time for a number in a letter display or a letter in a number display was more rapid than scanning for a target drawn from the same set as the background. Several unpractised subjects, and all the subjects who practised the task, were able to scan as fast through letters for “any number” as for a specific number, or conversely through digits. The finding of different scanning rates for two precisely physically specified targets, depending on which class they were drawn from, runs counter to an explanation of high-speed scanning in terms of the operation of visual feature analysers. It is suggested that familiar categorization responses may be immediate and may provide the basis for the discrimination of relevant from irrelevant items in rapid visual scanning.