Facilitator control as automatic behavior: A verbal behavior analysis.
Facilitated messages are often the helper’s own automatic speech, not the client’s.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Iwata (1993) looked at facilitated communication through Skinner’s lens.
The paper claims the facilitator’s hand moves like automatic verbal behavior.
That means the helper talks without knowing it, sure the words come from the client.
What they found
The author maps facilitator moves to Skinner’s “automatic” type.
The helper is unaware, unedited, and credits an outside source—here, the client.
How this fits with other research
Roane et al. (2019) gives the idea teeth. They asked a client to read words she had just typed. She could not. The probe shows the facilitator, not the client, authored the message.
Gillberg (1992) set the stage. One year earlier it used Skinner’s book to fix talking computers. Iwata (1993) flips the same tools onto people, showing how automatic speech can hide in plain sight.
Schlinger (2023) keeps the theme alive. It says infant babble is also automatic, driven by built-in reinforcers. Together the three papers stretch “automatic” from babies to machines to misguided helpers.
Why it matters
If you ever meet FC, run a quick word-recognition check. Ask the client to read what was just typed. A fail tells you the facilitator is the real speaker. Swap to proven methods like PECS or speech-generating devices and keep your sessions evidence-based.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Add a five-second word-recognition probe: after any typed sentence, ask the client to read it aloud.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Several studies of facilitated communication have demonstrated that the facilitators were controlling and directing the typing, although they appeared to be unaware of doing so. Such results shift the focus of analysis to the facilitator's behavior and raise questions regarding the controlling variables for that behavior. This paper analyzes facilitator behavior as an instance of automatic verbal behavior, from the perspective of Skinner's (1957) book Verbal Behavior. Verbal behavior is automatic when the speaker or writer is not stimulated by the behavior at the time of emission, the behavior is not edited, the products of behavior differ from what the person would produce normally, and the behavior is attributed to an outside source. All of these characteristics appear to be present in facilitator behavior. Other variables seem to account for the thematic content of the typed messages. These variables also are discussed.
The Analysis of verbal behavior, 1993 · doi:10.1007/BF03392890