Facilitated communication and autistic children: The problem of authorship

This paper explores the authorship of the written production of children with autism who need to be physically and emotionally supported by a competent interlocutor in order to communicate. Facilitated Communication is a technique developed for this purpose. However, a significant part of the scientific community considers it a controversial technique because of the difficulty in determining the authentic author of the message. The aim of this study is to examine the written communication of six autistic boys in order to investigate and determine direct or indirect evidence of authorship. In particular, the focus is on the process of communication itself, to find behaviours or written expressions that could disprove the hypothesis of a direct influence of the facilitator. Six secondary school students diagnosed with autism participated in this study. Each student participated in 8 sessions of facilitated communication, 4 with one parent at home, 4 with an educator at school, both parent and educator assuming the role of facilitator. According to our data, evidence of authorship was represented in all categories supporting our hypothesis that facilitated communication can be authentically based both on authentic interactions and messages between both partners.