From: kasab@luther.che.wisc.edu (John J. Kasab) 
Subject: Re:      Re: Facilitated Communication Question
Organization: University of Wisconsin - Madison
Date: 29 Sep 92 16:09:05 CDT
Originator: kasab@luther.che.wisc.edu

In article <AUTISM%92092915185129@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU> RJKOPP@SUVM.BITNET writes:
>The one thing that I think is always hard is that one can set the destination
>for many tests by their pre-disposition.  I believe if the person conducting
>the test wants it to fail, it ultimatly will.  If the person wants it to
>succeed, it has a much better chance of succeeding.  If the trust really is
>a big factor and I personally believe it could be that it depends on the
>children in the experiment.

IMHO, experimenter bias is more of a problem in a psychological
experiment than it is in a scientific setting.  In a good experiment, you
use randomization in order to eliminate experimenter bias, and I believe
that the tests necessary to prove that F/C actually works as advertised
could have the experimenter bias removed.  As an example of "biasing the
results to what is expected" you will encounter this problem in the
"spin" on the final report.  However, for a hypothesis to survive, one
should be able to test its validity.

The real source of bias in this case will be the set of subjects.  If you
want to show that F/C works, you could use a sample of people for whom
F/C seems to work really well.  If you want to show that it doesn't, you
get people for whom it doesn't work well.  If you want to keep it
bias-free, you get a list of people that represent all levels of apparent
ability, and then randomly select the pairs that you will actually test.

Also, you could develop a large set of questions that were appropriate
for the assumed intelligence level from simple things such as "What is
your name?" and "What color is the car in the picture?" to more advanced
and abstract items such as simple arithmetic, descriptions of emotional
states, and reading comprehension.  You could then randomly assign the
order of these questions to eliminate the bias of the person who wrote
them down.  (Put each on an index card, shuffle, and draw from your
"deck" in the order to be asked.)

If I can devise a cheap experimental apparatus (you need a typewriter or
computer with which to record answers, two headphones, and a tape
recorder on which you can record and play tracks separately, but in
synch) that would allow one to observe the content of the response based
on the answer given, then presumably anyone could.  If you believe that
the facilitatee can read, you could even visually present material to
both people, or to one or the other.

The main features of this test would be to either ask questions of the
facilitatee without the facilitator knowing what question has been asked,
or to ask different questions to each of them.  This way, you could
determine whether the responses were due to the facilitatee or the
facilitator.  I do not believe that such an experiment would affect the
level of trust needed in the pair.  I would expect that you could even
explain the test in full to all of the participants, since unlike many
psychological tests, the outcome should not be able to be affected by the
knowledge of the test format.  The testing should not be a stressful
situation, since you are testing the content of the response, rather than
trying to asses the intelligence of the responses.

>Another problem I see is that many researchers like to conduct tests like
>this in clinical atmosphere's.  These atmospheres are not comfortable to
>many people, say nothing about how it might affect autistics. 

The reason for this is obvious: having the subjects in the test come into
the lab is more convenient for the researcher.  A secondary consideration
is that this standardizes the environment in which the test was given.  I
agree that the test and room should be made as non-threatening as
possible, but there are some limits to this.

>Incidentally, the idea of facilitation is to withdraw the hand support
>gradually.  

The reports I had seen on facilitation did not make this point clear,
which I think should be made clear.  If the facilitatee is able to type
on her own, then it should be clear that the facilitatee is giving the
responses.  (well, one could perhaps argue that supernatural spirits had
invaded the typewriter, but since it is a simpler and more encouraging
hypothesis that the facilitatee is responsible it would be the hypothesis
that I would use. :)

Let me point out that I think F/C is a very promising method for
communication, and I would be more than happy to train autistics that are
apparently low-functioning to do work that requires the higher functioning
that F/C indicates they may be qualified to handle.  I am just leery of
endorsing a technique that can't even stand judicial scrutiny, much less
scientific scrutiny as it stands.

Manana, iguana,
JK
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  John Kasab                             "I rarely speak in absolutes."
Arpanet: kasab@cae.wisc.edu              (alt: kasab@luther.che.wisc.edu)
      The NSF and UW--Madison don't speak for me, nor I for them.
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