Facilitated Communication

By Peter Bokulich

Earlier this year, there was a story about an autistic young man who is unable communicate verbally, but who is able to communicate with the help of a facilitator.

For Jacob, facilitated communication means that someone needs to touch his elbows while he types on a computer or his iPad. “He says that if we don’t touch his elbow, he’s thinking about a Disney movie or people in his life,” Hanson said

There are pictures with the article that give some sense of how the facilitator aids Jacob in typing out his answers.

While it may be that Jacob is in fact communicating through typing, studies in the past have demonstrated that practitioners of facilitated communication sometimes deceive themselves into thinking that the answers are coming from their clients, rather than from themselves:

This 1993 Frontline episode covers the controversy. (Most relevant portions: 30 seconds to 6 minutes.)