I don't feel picked on at all ;-) . I completely agree with everything you said and it is what I discuss with my students during and after the movie. The first point is (as Paul said) that naturally a case study provides no evidence at all as to whether FC works. But it IS possible that FC does work for a few individual children even if we do not have the evidence to show that it works (because a case study cannot eliminate competing explanations for the improved communication). So the second point that my students typically make is that even if it did work for a few children (which of course we don't know if it does) one should not pour resources and energy into ineffective methods like FC but instead work on methods that have been shown to work. [For those of you who have not seen the video FC was "sold" in workshops before ever being properly validated. Autistic children who might have only known 50 words were suddenly writing poetry and sitting - with their facilitator - in high school calculus and Shakespeare classes. Many child abuse case also went to court with children using FC revealing abuse. As it turns out children who appeared to communicate using FC were really just lead by the facilitator. Once a double blind technique removed the possibility of facilitator influence the children could not communicate at all].Paul Smith: Back to the FC issue. I worry that when we say things like what Marie said here (sorry, Marie - I'm picking on you. This must be what it's like to be a presidential candidate, hey?):
I highly recommend the video.
Marie
-- ********************************************* Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology Dickinson College, P.O. Box 1773 Carlisle, PA 17013 Office: (717) 245-1562, Fax: (717) 245-1971 *********************************************
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