Facilitated Communication and Children with Disabilities: An Enigma in Search of a Perspective

As defined by Crossley (1988Crossley ( , 1992a) ) and Bilden (1990Bilden ( , 1992)), facilitated communication is an augmentative communication method that permits individuals with severe disabilities such as autism to demonstrate unanticipated, and in some instances extraordinary, communication skills.Sustained by hand-over-hand support or other types of physical assistance from an individual without disabilities, people with disabilities who are thought to have limited communication ability purportedly are able to type thoughts and ideas, using facilitated communication, that are nothing short of remarkable.After only minimal experience with facilitated communication, individuals with severe disabilities allegedly have communicated that they have normal intelligence and adept social skills and knowledge.Other individuals reportedly have revealed that through facilitated communication, they are for the first time in their lives able to communicate.Still, others with severe disabilities purportedly have communicated that they are trapped within a body that prohibits them from moving or communicating with others competently because of a condition known as global apraxia (Biklen & Schubert, 1991;Calculator, 1992).Biklen (1992) proposed that individuals with global apraxia might seem to have severe language deficits and mental retardation in spite of having intact language processing abilities and normal intelligence.Thus, when afforded facilitated communication, these individuals demonstrate normal intelligence and advanced social skills, literacy, and communication abilities. MAY 1995Rosemary Crossley, an Australian, is acknowledged as the developer of facilitated communication.During the 1970s she worked at the St. Nicholas Institution in Melbourne with individuals having multiple disabilities, most of whom were thought to have severe and profound retardation.At St. Nicholas, Crossley became involved with a young woman by the name of Anne McDonald, who had athetoid cerebral palsy.Anne was unable to effectively communicate, feed herself, or walk.The staff at the institution believed her to have profound retardation.Crossley, however,