The Horse That Won't Go Away by Thomas Heinzen & Scott Lilienfeld & Susan A. Nolan

Author:Thomas Heinzen & Scott Lilienfeld & Susan A. Nolan
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Psychology, General
ISBN: 9781464145742
Publisher: Worth Publishers
Published: 2014-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

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Child with autism

Adult facilitator

Crucial experimental test for facilitated communication.

The results of both crucial experiments stunned the world of

FC. The studies came from multiple independent laboratories

around the country, yet they were remarkably consistent, and

they appeared in prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journals.

In carefully controlled published trials, children with autism

were unable to produce any correct responses in the test trials.32

The consensus of the scientific community became more

assertive as multiple well-controlled studies appeared in the

early 1990s, virtually all with uniformly negative results. These

investigations exemplified science as its best, as they convincingly ruled out the rival hypothesis that the seeming success

of FC was due to the innermost thoughts of individuals with

autism. The authors of a 1995 review published in American

Psychologi st, the American Psychological Association’s flagship

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journal, concluded that “controlled research using single and

double-blind procedures in laboratory and natural settings with

clinical populations with which FC (facilitated communication)

is used have determined that … people with disabilities [are]

unable to respond accurately to label or describe stimuli unseen

by their assistants.” 33 By 1999 there were 18 published well-controlled trials of FC, with 183 total opportunities for children with autism to provide correct responses. The box score across

these 18 studies was a startling 0 out of 183.34

Later, a handful of trials with favorable results emerged in a few

published studies, but these results were quickly rebutted by behavioral scientists. Why? In these studies facilitators had access to

knowledge about the stimulus materials, making it logically im—

possible to rule out the rival hypothesis of inadvertent facilitator

influence. As the late University of Minnesota clinical psychologist Paul Meehl noted in 1967,35 a handy rule of thumb in science is that when effects are genuine, they should become larger in magnitude when more rigorous experimental controls are imposed. Yet, in FC, as in the case of Clever Hans, we witnessed the

opposite. Effects emerged only when experimental controls were

absent or sloppy, and disappeared when they were stringent.

In science, especially psychological science, it is exceedingly rare to find instances of unanimously negative results across

scores of independent studies. Yet despite multiple tests by

different investigative teams, FC had failed—and failed spectacularly. The evidence, incredible as it seemed, pointed overwhelmingly to unintentional control of the autistic individuals’

arm and hand movements by facilitators. The facilitators, it

seemed, were doing the typing themselves without realizing

it. 36 What had been going on?

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c l e v e r h a n d s : t h e f a c i l i t a t e d c o m m u n i c a t i o n s t o r y h 69

The answer, oddly enough, comes in part from scientific

work testing spiritualism. In essence, the FC keyboard appears

to be little more than a modern version of the Ouija board.

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