Research

Bara, B.G., Bucciarelli, M., & Colle, L. (2001). Communicative abilities in autism: Evidence for attentional deficits. Brain and Language, 77, 216-240. AUTHOR ABSTRACT
Investigated the communicative ability of 20 7-18 yr old mute autistics. The authors used an experimental technique that allows autistic children to access and process the communicative acts in a familiar context for as long as needed. The experimental results show that the sample of autistic children performs as well as the control group of normal children in dealing with directs, indirects, ironies, deceits, and recoveries of failure. Independent of their respective difficulty, the felicitous outcome of any of these acts requires the capacity to attribute an adequate communicative intention to the actor. Moreover, the results show that, contrary to the established findings in the literature, autistics' performance in the standard false belief task, a task that requires one to understand the mental states of other people, is equivalent to the performance of normal subjects. The authors argue that an attentional deficit affects the communicative performance of autistics in experiments where classic methodologies are used; with the proper methodology, we can access the unexplored world where mute autistic children also communicate. The authors conclude that the autistic communicative deficit is at the performance level and that it has an attentional nature.

Biklen, D., Saha, N. & Kliewer, C. (1995). How teachers confirm the authorship of facilitated communication: A portfolio approach. The Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, 20(1), 45-56. AUTHOR ABSTRACT
A study examined how teachers determined that the words typed with facilitation by their handicapped students were their students' own. Facilitated communication has been reported to foster sentence level communication in individuals with autism, cerebral palsy, Down's syndrome, and other developmental disabilities. Findings indicated that each of the teachers called forth evidence of the individual differences in how the students attended to typing and differences in the content, form, and style of their typing. Teachers also found that students sometimes conveyed information, typically concerning content and issues of personal importance to the students, which was reportedly not previously known to the teachers but that could be verified. Teachers used a portfolio approach to authenticate each student's communication to their satisfaction. They constructed a picture of accumulated detail that comprised the students' typing and the teachers' ideas about how they typed, including idiosyncratic style, specific difficulties, and distinctive content.

Broderick, A. & Kasa-Hendrickson, C. (2001). "Say just one word at first": The emergence of reliable speech in a student labeled with autism. The Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, 26(1), 13-24. ABSTRACT
This article presents a qualitative, interpretivist research study that documents the emergence, in the context of typed expression, of increasingly useful and reliable speech for a young person labeled with autism. The authors construct a descriptive narrative of the process of this young man's emergent speech development and organize the data around four components of this complex, dynamic, and nonlinear process: (a) echolalia or "unreliable" speech, (b) reading out loud, (c) using reliable speech, and (d) integrating speaking and typing. Additionally, the authors identify three categories of supports that this young man and his family experienced and interpreted as being supportive of his emergent speech. These categories include (a) the importance of taking risks, (b) the importance of seeing and hearing words together, and (c) the importance of an inclusive academic education including rich literacy experiences. Throughout, this inductive analysis constructs an understanding of how this young man and his family have experienced and interpreted his emergence as a reliable speaker.

Cardinal, D.N., Hanson, D., & Wakeham, J. (1996). An investigation of authorship in facilitated communication. Mental Retardation, 34(4), 231-242. AUTHOR ABSTRACT
We examined whether facilitated communication users, under controlled conditions, could transmit rudimentary information to a naive facilitator. Forty-three students across 10 classrooms were shown a single randomly selected word with their facilitator out of the room. The facilitator then entered the room and asked the student to type the word, which was recorded exactly as typed and later evaluated; approximately 3,800 attempts were conducted over a 6-week period. Results showed that (a) under controlled conditions, some facilitated communication users can pass accurate information and (b) measurement of facilitated communication under test conditions may be significantly benefited [sic] by extensive practice of the test protocol, which could partially account for the inability of several past studies to verify facilitated communication-user originated output.

Mirenda, P. (2003). "He's not really a reader...": Perspectives on supporting literacy development in individuals with autism. Topics in Language Disorders, 23(4), 271-282. AUTHOR ABSTRACT
Although many individuals with autism are able to demonstrate skills that are directly related to literacy, they are often seen as "too cognitively impaired" or "not ready for" instruction in this important area. This article provides suggestions for strategies that can be used to promote literacy learning across the five stages of word reading development described by Ehri. Examples of the experiences of people with autism who have become successful readers are included to illustrate the importance of promoting literacy development for all learners.

Rubin, S., Biklen, D., Kasa-Hendrickson, C., Kluth, P., Cardinal, D.N., Broderick, A. (2001). Independence, participation, and the meaning of intellectual ability. Disability & Society, 16(3), 415-429. AUTHOR ABSTRACT
This article presents a non-speaking person's perspectives on independence and the implications of newfound communication abilities for her participation in the world and upon the meaning of intellectual ability. The person with the communication disability also has autism and, early in her life, was classified by school officials as 'severely retarded.' The narrative focuses especially on the concepts of independence, participation, and intellectual competence or intellectual performance, and their relationship to the concepts of democracy, freedom, and identity, all from a non-essentialist perspective. In addition, the article addresses practical questions about how, from her perspective, the non-speaking person developed the ability to communicate without physical support.

Sheehan, C.M., & Matuozzi, R.T. (1996). Investigation of the validity of facilitated communication through the disclosure of unknown information. Mental Retardation, 34, 94-107. AUTHOR ABSTRACT
Three individuals (8, 10, and 24 years old with diagnoses of autism and mental retardation) participated in a message-passing format to determine whether they could disclose information previously unknown to their facilitators. Results showed valid facilitated communication from each participant. The facilitated speakers participated in 14 sessions, each lasting approximately 1 to 1.5 hours. A wide range of information was collected, coded, and analyzed for validity, consistency, language difficulties, behavioral compliance, and style of facilitation. Out of 720 communicative interactions, participants disclosed 77 incidents of unknown information. Each participant revealed unique behaviors and styles of responding, and all were able to demonstrate genuinely independent communication through disclosure of specific information previously unknown to a facilitator, although much inconsistency was noted. Results suggest that a phenomena as complex as facilitated communication eludes a cursory exploration.

Weiss, M.J., Wagner, S.H., & Bauman, M.L. (1996). A validated case study of facilitated communication. Mental Retardation, 34, 220-230. AUTHOR ABSTRACT
The case of a 13-year-old boy with autism, severe mental retardation, and a seizure disorder who was able to demonstrate valid facilitated communication was described. In three independent trials, short stories were presented to him, followed by validation test procedures with an uninformed facilitator providing physical support to the subject's arm. In Trials 1 and 3, several specific answers were provided that clearly indicated that the young man, not the uninformed facilitator, was the source of the information. Moreover, some responses seemed to imply that the subject was employing simple inferential and abstract reasoning. This case study adds to the small, but growing number of demonstrations that facilitated communication can sometimes be a valid method for at least some individuals with developmental disabilities.