This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Konstantareas, M. M. Articles by Gravelle, G. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Konstantareas, M. M. Articles by Gravelle, G. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Facilitated Communication

The Contribution of Physical, Emotional and Mental Support

University of Guelph, Canada

Gregory Gravelle

Community Resource Service, Kitchener, Canada

This study examined types of support in Facilitated Communication with 12 non-verbal individuals with autism. Literacy tasks of graduated difficulty that included letter identification, word comprehension, labelling and sentence completion were employed to address the possible presence of literacy under three conditions of support: physical, emotional and mental. Although full facilitator support resulted in high performance levels on all tasks, emotional and physical support alone yielded unintelligible or minimal output. Thus, contrary to proponents' claims as to the importance of physical and emotional support, facilitated output hinges crucially on facilitator-provided mental support. In this study this was true regardless of task difficulty and motor requirement complexity, arguing against the technique's relevance to overcoming motor or emotional problems and demonstrating literacy in individuals with autism.

Key Words: autism • Facilitated Communication • literacy • non-verbal persons

Autism, Vol. 2, No. 4, 389-414 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/1362361398024005


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?