Authorship in Facilitated Communication: An Analysis of 11 Cases

We studied the authorship of messages produced through facilitated communication (FC) for all users of FC in two comprehensive schools in a small city in Finland. The participants were 11 children with intellectual disabilities, including autism, all having used FC from 1-3 years. The test conditions involved open and blind information-passing tasks in which the participants were directed to write down the contents of written or pictorial stimuli. The results failed to validate FC as a method of communication for any participant or facilitator. An analysis of the messages produced under the FC condition revealed a large degree of facilitator influence on the content of the messages produced. Additionally, FC impaired the performance of the two participants who had previously demonstrated some independent writing skills.