Textbooks and other
books supporting the use of Facilitated Communication and people who use it, by
well respected and knowledgeable experts on AAC and on education of people with
severe disabilities.
Note: This is not intended to be an exhaustive
list, but merely a list with some good examples.
Hank Bersani, Ph.D.
Bersani,
H.A., Jr. (Ed.). (1999). Responding to the challenge: current trends and international issues in
developmental disabilities: essays in
honor of Gunnar Dybwad. Cambridge,
MA: Brookline Books.
Hank
Bersani’s tribute to Gunnar Dybwad includes a chapter entitled “Not to Yield”
by Robert Williams Parsons Cutler, Jr., a well known advocate and past
President of AutCom, and well known adult with autism who communicates by
typing using facilitated communication methods.
The book with chapter titles and authors is noted here:
David R. Beukelman,
Ph.D., and Pat Mirenda, Ph.D.
Beukelman, D. R. & Mirenda, P.
(2005). Augmentative &
Alternative Communciation: Supporting
children & adults with complex communication needs. (3rd ed., pp. 323-326)
“Sharisa [Kochmeister] joins a small group of people around the
world who began communicating through FC and are now able to type either
independently or with minimal, hand-on-shoulder support. There can be no doubt that, for them, FC
“worked,” in that it opened the door to communication for the first time. In addition, hundreds (or even thousands) of
individuals use FC with physical support.
To many observers, it does not seem clear whether these individuals are
authoring their own messages. Thus, FC
has become controversial and hotly contested as a valid and reliable technique
(e.g., Calculator, 1999b; Duchan, 1999; Green & Shane, 1994). We include FC here because of Sharisa Kochmeister
(1997), Lucy Blackman (1999), Jamie Burke (Broderick & Kasa-Hendrickson,
2001), Sue Rubin (1998), and others who now communicate fluently and
independently, thanks to FC. For them,
the controversy has ended.”
Joanne M. Cafiero,
Ph.D.
Cafiero,
J. M. (2005) Meaningful Exchanges for
People with Autism: An Introduction to Augmentative and Alternative
Communication. Bethesda, MD: Woodbine
House.
“There
is a lack of scientific evidence in tightly controlled studies validating
Facilitated Communication. This lack of quantitative evidence to support
Facilitated Communication should not in any way discourage parents and
practitioners from considering keyboards as communication options, nor should
opportunities to provide literacy instruction be ignored. There are qualitative
studies of individuals with ASD who participated in Facilitated Communication
and are now independent typing communicators. Providing physical support in
keyboarding must involve a systematic fading of those prompts and physical supports
with the ultimate goal of encouraging functional, spontaneous, unprompted
communication.” (pages 79-80)
June
Downing, Ph.D.
Downing, J. (2004). Communication skills. In F. Orelove, D. Sobsey & R. K.
Silberman (Eds.), Educating children with multiple disabilities: A collaborative approach (3rd ed., pp.
551-552). Boston: Paul H. Brookes.
June
Downing notes that “FC thus offers some individuals with severe and multiple
disabilities an opportunity to express themselves and should be considered as a
viable intervention option.”
Here
is the entire section on Facilitated Communication in her chapter (11):
“Facilitated Communication (FC), a
controversial approach to teaching and helping some students to communicate,
combines physical and emotional support with the use of an AAC device (Biklen,
1973; Crossley, 1994). Although this
approach uses several strategies of direct instruction (e.g. prompts,
reinforcement, fading), the controversy surrounding it focuses on the
authorship of the created message (Green & Shane, 1994; Kaiser, 1994). The major concern with the technique is that
the person supporting the student (the facilitator) will consciously or
unconsciously take a primary role in developing messages that are then said to
come from the student. Such influence is
present in any use of ACDs when the person using the device requires
substantial assistance to do so, however.
Obviously, with any intervention strategy, the critical goal is to fade
support to allow the student maximum independent performance. When FC is done correctly, the facilitator
does not move the students hand to create the message but instead, follows the
student's lead and only provides support as needed to allow the student access
to the device (Crossley, 1994). The
facilitator steadies the individual's arm but does not direct it in the
development of a message.
The
ACD used in FC can be a simple letter board, a complex electronic device, a
picture-based system, objects, or essentially any device that requires direct
selection of the message. When performed
correctly, authorship of the message by the individual with severe disabilities
can be ascertained (Biklen, Saha, Kliewer, 1995; Cardinal, Hanson and Wakeham,
1996). FC thus offers some individuals
with severe and multiple disabilities an opportunity to express themselves and
should be considered as a viable intervention option.”