Evaluation of a mechanical hand-support for facilitated communication.
A mechanical hand-support device cannot turn facilitated communication into real independent typing for autistic individuals.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers tested a mechanical hand-support device. The goal was to help nonspeaking autistic people type on their own.
Participants got eight weeks of training. The team then added four more months to be sure. No one produced a single independent message.
What they found
The device failed completely. After the full training period, no participant typed even one word without help.
The study joins a long list showing that facilitated communication does not work.
How this fits with other research
Duker et al. (1996) saw the same result two years earlier. They gave fourteen autistic students ten weeks of facilitated communication. Zero learned to type.
Anonymous (2019) looks like the opposite story. That team paired an iPad speech app with PECS lessons. All three teens learned to request items on their own. The difference: the iPad gave clear voice output and needed no hand-holding.
Bigby et al. (2009) later showed that a PDA with picture prompts let autistic students cook meals alone. The 1998 device sought the same independence but missed the mark.
Why it matters
If a family asks about facilitated communication, you now have solid evidence to say no. Point them toward iPad-based speech apps or PECS instead. Save your training hours for tools that actually give learners their own voice.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A specially designed hand-support device was evaluated to determine its effectiveness in assisting nonspeaking mentally handicapped children transition from facilitated communication (FC) to independent typing. Six autistic individuals (age range: 5 to 31) participated in the main experiment. All six had been reported to be moderately to highly proficient in the use of FC prior to the study. Pre- and posttraining tasks included pointing to pictures, numbers, and letters as well as copying single words by typing on a keyboard or letterboard. After 8 weeks of training, subjects' ability to point or type on all four tasks was assessed in three different conditions: (a) with an experienced facilitator, (b) independently, and (c) with the mechanical hand-support system. Postassessment measures did not reveal any evidence of independent communication with or without the device. An informal extension of the study, in which four of the original six subjects and three additional subjects were included for 4 additional months, also failed to provide evidence of significant communication.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1998 · doi:10.1023/a:1026044716536