Who's Doing the Pointing? Investigating Facilitated Communication in a Classroom Setting with Students with Autism

The first author, a certified speech-language pathologist (SLP), served as the facilitator for two students with autism to assess pointing control during facilitated communication. The teacher instructed the students during typical classroom activities, and two classroom assistants collected data. We used a counterbalanced alternating treatments design with the SLP/facilitator being either blind or sighted. She wore sunglasses throughout the investigation with a cardboard cutout inserted for the blind condition. The alternating treatments data reveal that the students responded more accurately when the SLP/facilitator could see in spite of the fact that she did not think she was influencing their responding and did not intentionally do so.

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