title: Failure to confirm the word-retrieval problem hypothesis in facilitated communication.
abstract: Two hypotheses were raised and empirically tested to account for the failure of previous controlled validation studies to find evidence of literacy in nonspeaking persons with autism using facilitated communication: (a) The naming tasks used in other studies have triggered specific "word retrieval" problems, or anomia, and (b) a perceptual problem, visual agnosia, prevents subjects from recognizing objects without touching them. Three nonspeaking autistic children who had used facilitation for at least 2 years were evaluated with four experimentally controlled tasks, over a period of 5 months. In descriptive and object handling tasks, and in a traditional picture identification task, subjects failed to type correct answers when facilitators were blind; one subject, however, occasionally engaged in signing and vocalizations that were context-appropriate. Results reflected a generalized language deficit, rather than isolated word-finding or perceptual difficulties, and were consistent with many previous studies revealing facilitator cuing. Questions are raised about inconsistencies in pseudo-correct scores, a measure of facilitator influence, reported here and in previous research.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, State University of New York, New Paltz 12561-2499, USA.
authors.forename: C A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Vázquez
mesh_terms: D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000150:complications / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D002648:Child; D003143:Communication Devices for People with Disabilities; D004311:Double-Blind Method; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D008297:Male