How Conscious were Dickens and Powell of Facilitator Control in FC? Thoughts about the Telepathy Tapes (Episode 2)
In my review of Episode 1 of the Telepathy Tapes, I mentioned that I was not looking forward to reviewing upcoming episodes, but in listening to and taking notes on Episode 2, I’m beginning to see the value of making these “testing” sessions available for scrutiny by academics, science writers, and others and for use as source material to educate people about pseudoscience. Just like with other pro-FC films, YouTube videos, etc., the Telepathy Tapes podcast provides an in-depth view into facilitator mindset and documents—using proponents’ own words and actions—facilitator cueing and control over letter selection. We also can learn from the mistakes the documentarian, Ky Dickens, and the academic, Diane Hennacy Powell, make in conducting their telepathy tests.
Images showing just some of the ways facilitators “support” their clients by holding on to the person or onto the letter board. Either way, facilitators (often inadvertently) provide physical, visual, and auditory cues that influence and/or control letter selection.
For example, Dickens and Powell appear to assume that the messages generated by the participants in their series using Facilitated Communication (FC) are independent and free from facilitator control. That’s highly unlikely. To date, there is no reliably controlled evidence to prove proponent claims of communication independence using facilitator-dependent techniques. In fact, the controlled studies show that facilitators, not the individuals being subjected to the technique, are controlling letter selection.
Dickens talked about “presuming competence” in Episode 2, which is, in the FC world, code for not testing for authorship. As people claiming to be scientifically minded, Dickens and Powell missed a great opportunity to rule out facilitator control over letter selection before moving on to their tests of telepathy, claiming instead that questioning the communications is a form of ableism.
Instead of controlling for facilitator influence, Dickens and Powell prevented or “blinded” the individuals being subjected to FC from seeing the test stimuli (e.g., pictures, words, numbers, and popsicle sticks) while the facilitators (and everyone else in the room) had access to the target picture, word, number, etc. In essence, the “controls” they put in place were meaningless. The issue of telepathy in individuals being subjected to FC can only be addressed if facilitator influence over letter selection is ruled out. In this case, facilitator authorship could not be ruled out because the facilitators knew the answers to each trial in the tests.
Image by Giulia May
It’s not clear from Episode 1 if Dickens or Powell knew that FC has long been discredited or if they understood that claims of independent authorship cannot be taken as the words of the individuals being subjected to the technique without first ruling out facilitator control over letter selection. (No proponent of FC has successfully done this).
However, in Episode 2, we learn that both Dickens and Powell were aware of authorship issues in FC. In Episode 1, after the testing the two did with a family from Mexico, Powell warned Dickens that the scientific community would not accept the testing, but Dickens does not elaborate, except to imply that the scientific community is opposed to funding tests for telepathy. However, in Episode 2, Dickens explains that touch-based FC is problematic because the facilitator holds onto the person’s wrist, elbow, shoulder or other body part. This leaves me with two questions:
Why didn’t Powell discuss the problems regarding FC authorship with Dickens before flying the family (in Episode 1) to the United States from Mexico for testing?
Why didn’t Powell and Dickens design tests from the start that would be accepted by the scientific community (e.g., controlled testing that blinded facilitators and that were designed to rule in or rule out facilitator control. over letter selection)?
We can only assume that Dickens and Powell chose to ignore or downplay the existing body of evidence-based research that demonstrates facilitator interference. Dickens appears to take a “seeing is believing” approach and seems to believe that she can detect facilitator cueing (and/or rule it out) simply by watching the facilitator-client interaction. She also seems to think that facilitator cueing can only happen if the facilitator touches the individual (as opposed to holding a letter board in the air). She’s wrong on both accounts because:
Facilitator cueing can be very subtle, especially for those who’ve practiced FC for weeks, months, or years and are motivated to make FC “work.” This is exactly why reliably controlled authorship testing is necessary to rule in or rule out facilitator control. (Dickens’ tests—or at least the ones I’ve heard described so far—are not reliably controlled for FC authorship).
Most observers of FC watch the individual being facilitated and miss the facilitator behaviors that contribute to (or control altogether) letter selection.
Dickens and Powell were multi-tasking during the tests (e.g., giving orders to the camera crew, devising the tests on the fly) and, even if the cueing was more-or-less obvious, could have missed or overlooked facilitator influence.
People who are motivated to want FC (or telepathy) to “work” may be more likely to remember the “hits” (e.g. times when FC seems to work) and forget the “misses” (e.g., times when the FC messages are unintelligible or incorrect).
Episode 2 features one family in New Jersey recommended to Dickens by Powell. The mother acts as facilitator for her son using a form of FC she calls “supported typing.” The parent was introduced to “supported typing,” by her son’s teachers in a local school system. And, though the parent didn’t believe in the technique at first, both the school system and the parent continued to use it. The mother/facilitator now believes that, with the use of “supported typing,” her son’s mind and her own are connected.
I’ve always associated supported typing with touch-based FC, but the technique Dickens describes sounds more like Spelling to Communicate (S2C) or Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) where the facilitator holds the letter board or iPad in the air while the individual being facilitated extends a finger toward the board. The degree to which proponents use the different names for FC interchangeably makes it difficult to know which form of FC is being used and highlights the importance of analyzing the behaviors of the facilitators to determine who is controlling letter selection rather than depending on the name du jour facilitators give to the technique. We’ve documented over 20 pseudonyms for FC and listed them on the homepage of our website. We use “FC” on this website as an umbrella term for all facilitator-dependent techniques.
Regardless, Dickens (and perhaps Powell as well) appears to believe that facilitators can only influence letter selection if they touch the individual’s hand, forearm, wrist, shoulder, or other body part, but, again, she is misinformed. She, correctly, points out that there are more studies regarding touch-based FC than there are S2C and RPM, but that’s only because proponents of S2C/RPM refuse to participate in authorship studies designed to rule in or rule out facilitator influence. (See An FC Primer)
Facilitators can and do cue their clients with these methods through visual prompts (e.g., shifts in body position, head nods, hand signals) and vocal prompts (e.g., changes in vocal inflection to indicate the start and stop of a word, saying “up, up, up, up” or providing other verbal prompts to direct letter selection), and subtly moving the board in the air to aid in letter selection. Despite proponents’ refusal to participate in rigorously controlled testing, there are enough similarities between FC and RPM/S2C that major speech/language, behavior, and autism organizations oppose their use based on concerns about prompt dependency, facilitator control, and other potential harms.
It’s important to note that, often, facilitators are unaware of the extent to which they control letter selection, although, arguably, the prompts (e.g., vocalizations by the facilitator, hand signals) used with the FC forms of Spelling to Communicate (S2C), Spellers Method, and Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) appear to be more deliberate than prompts used with traditional touch-based FC. And while some facilitators admit that other people cue their clients, often they deny the behaviors in themselves. A sincere belief in the technique and an intent not to control letter selection are not evidence of communication independence for the individuals being subjected to FC.
As with Episode 1, the facilitator in Episode 2 was given access to test stimuli, so, in every instance, she knew the answers to the questions being asked.
I found one test described in Episode 2 particularly interesting. This was, as Dickens described, a demonstration of how telepathy “worked” between mother and son “in real time.” The purpose of the activity was to show how the son, who was sitting across the room from his mother, could speak every letter as she was writing it.
Dickens described how the mother drew individual letters on a piece of paper while sitting at the dining room table as her son watched from a distance. He was sitting on a couch across the room. In what could be a perfect example of facilitator cueing, the son, purportedly, recognized the hand movements his mother made as she wrote: M-O-V. The son said “movie” before the mother had written out all the letters. (Or, the son made utterances that his mother interpreted as “movie.” From the few examples provided in the episode, the son’s speech sound production was, largely unintelligible. It’s likely that only close family members or friends can understand his speech).
Probably it’s the skeptic in me, but I wondered if this is something they’d practiced, especially since this impromptu “test” was initiated by the mother, though I believe the mother is sincere in her belief of their “mind-to-mind” connection. Another possibility is that “movie” was a frequent and perhaps echolalic word the mother knew her son used and he happened to be repeating the word “movie” just at the moment she was writing the word on a piece of paper. It doesn’t seem magical or mysterious to me, but merely a coincidence. In addition, the only basic words in English that start with “m-o-v” are “movie” and various forms of the verb “move.” Given that he’d been asking for his iPad to watch YouTube videos for most of the morning, it may not be much of a coincidence that he called out “movie” when she wrote it, especially if "m-o-v-i-e” was a word that they frequently practiced spelling together.
In any event, if it’s true that the son recognized individual letters by his mother’s hand movements, this isn’t telepathy. Rather, it is a perfect example of how visual cues influence letter selection particularly in individuals who know and recognize letters, but who might not necessarily know how to spell words. Certainly, we’ve seen in YouTube videos FC sessions of facilitators using various hand signals to (perhaps non-consciously) aid in letter selection. We don’t know for sure if the young man in episode 2 was truly able to “read” the hand signals, we’re not given enough information in the podcast to know what his academic skill level is. So, it seems that his purported “ability” to discern letters written by his mother from across the room would need to be explored further, but under reliably controlled conditions. Here are some questions I have about this “ability”:
Does he have the literacy skills necessary to identify letters and/or put the letters into sequences to formulate words?
Does he, for example, only know the letters if his mother draws them? Or is this ability transferrable to other people?
Does this seeming ability to recognize the shapes of letters from across the room only apply to words he uses frequently in echoed speech (and that his mother knows)? Or can this skill be applied to any word?
Besides moving her hand in the shape of the letters, was his mother giving off other, (probably inadvertent) cues about which letters she was drawing (e.g., saying the letter silently as she drew it, moving her body in the shape of the letter)?
I can understand how, to a parent, educator, or documentarian who is motivated to believe in FC or telepathy, these behaviors learned over hours of practice and positive reinforcement can seem mystical and magical, but I think in their willingness to explain the inexplicable (e.g., unexpected literacy skills or instances where it felt to the facilitators like the individuals revealed unexpected information only the facilitators knew), they are overlooking a simpler explanation: that there is no magic. The facilitators are authoring the messages.
Note: I’m not judging here, btw: I fell for the illusion of FC before undergoing double-blind testing in the early 1990s, so I get how someone can be fooled by what are essentially magic tricks.
Dickens also seems impressed that the son can supposedly type out information that the facilitator knows, but the son had no access to. For example, he seemed to know details about a movie or book the mother had seen or read when the son was not in the room. But, given that the mother was facilitating the answers, it is no surprise at all. Again, this isn’t an example of magic or telepathy. This is an example of (perhaps inadvertent) facilitator cueing and control over letter selection. It doesn’t matter that the son was in a different part of the house when she read a book or saw a film, because, as we learned in Episode 1, when the facilitator knows the answers to the tests (or “telepathic conversations) being conducted, the FC-generated messages reflect the correct answers.
Image from ASHA’s website (2018)
As this blog post is getting long, I will end with a few final thoughts I have about Episode 2:
The school system in New Jersey started FC (aka supported typing) with the autistic student before getting permission from the parent. Educators, speech/language pathologists, and others have an ethical duty to provide parents with information regarding the dangers of FC and other discredited, disproven or unproven techniques. It appears that the mother in this instance was not appraised of the dangers of FC or told that FC is not a recognized form of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). Based on the events as described in the episode, she could not have give informed consent before the school system imposed the discredited technique on her child.
I’m reminded of a 2011 article by Brian Gorman titled “Psychology and Law in the Classroom: How the use of clinical fads in the classroom may awaken the educational malpractice claim.” My questions are this: What responsibility do educators have to provide their students with evidence-based methods and techniques in the classroom? Are educators who use FC setting themselves and their school systems up for malpractice lawsuits—particularly when there is a documented history of false allegations of abuse claims and facilitator crimes associated with the use of FC? Shouldn’t the parents have the right to informed consent for use of unproven, disproven and/or discredited techniques?
The individual with autism featured in Episode 2 had the fine and gross motor skills to shower and dress by himself, use electrical appliances to boil an egg on his own, and manipulate a keyboard to find YouTube videos on an iPad without facilitator interference. Why, then, would he need support from a facilitator to select individual letters on a keyboard?
Dickens, like in Episode 1, mentions that, at times during the testing she was “winging it” and that she really didn’t know what is happening. This screams incompetence to me. I’m not saying her intentions weren’t good or that she meant to do harm, but where is the oversight for these tests she’s conducting?
Most research conducted on human beings goes through an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or some sort of oversight committee. And, while I’ve heard academic colleagues of mine complain about how frustrating the IRB can be (so many hoops to jump through!), the IRB is designed to protect the rights and well-being of the subjects participating in the testing. They plan out exactly what tests are to be done, what controls will be put into place, and how to document the proceedings. They have a clear understanding of what questions they are asking and why. If something unexpected comes up during the testing, they stop the testing, review the issue (outside the presence of the participants) and make changes accordingly. Reputable researchers don’t just “wing it.”By the end of Episode 2, Dickens appears to publicly criticize the mother from Episode 1 for used a touch-based form of FC—a form of FC that Powell, at least, knew was problematic. Did Dickens and/or Powell know about facilitator authorship issues before conducting the testing? After? Certainly, they must have been aware of the problem of facilitator cueing before the episode aired. In my opinion, Dickens and Powell had a responsibility to protect that parent and educate her about the dangers of using FC before conducting the telepathy testing, at the minimum, but certainly before releasing the episode to the public. Perhaps they should have left Episode 1 out altogether. Dickens talks about how much the parents want answers but withholding information from them—like the fact that FC has been discredited since the mid-1990s and that major organizations oppose its use, to me, seems irresponsible.
In closing, for me, there were many cringeworthy moments in Episode 1 and Episode 2 and I fear the Telepathy Tapes will do more damage than good to nonspeaking individuals with autism and their families. I’ve started to see posts on social media by believers in FC and telepathy who are claiming this podcast will be “historic.” It might well be, but not for the reasons they think.
References and Recommended Reading:
Blog Posts in this Series
FC’s Less Known Side: Thoughts About the Telepathy Tapes (Episode 1)
Burgess, C.A., Kirsch, I., Shane, H., Niederauer, K.L., Graham, S.M., Bacon, A. (January 1998). Facilitated Communication as an Ideomotor Response. Psychological Science, 9(1), 71-74. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40063250
Finn, P., Bothe, A.K., and Bramlett, R.E. (2005, August). Science and Pseudoscience in Communication Disorders: Criteria and Applications. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. 14 (4), 172-186.
Friedman-Hauser, Gal, and Jacobson, Ma’ayan. (2024, August 14). Pursuing Justice for Children with Disabilities: Exploring the Risks of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) and Advancing the Field. International Journal on Child Maltreatment. DOI: 10.1007/s42448-024-00213-z
Gorman, B.J. (2011). Psychology and Law in the Classroom: How the Use of Clinical Fads in the Classroom may Awaken the Educational Malpractice Claim. Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal, 2011 (1), 29-50.
Heinzen, T., Lilienfeld, S., Nolan, S.A. (2015). The Horse That Won’t Go Away: Clever Hans, Facilitated Communication, and the Need for Clear Thinking. McMillan Learning ISBN 978-1464145742
Jarry, Jonathan. (2024, December 13). The Telepathy Tapes Prove We All Want to Believe. McGill Office for Science and Society.
Kezuka E. (October 1997). The Role of Touch in Facilitated Communication. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 27(5), 571-593. DOI: 10.1023/A:1025882127478
Schlosser, R.W., Hemsley, B., Shane, H. et al. (2019). Rapid prompting method and autism spectrum disorder: Systematic review exposes lack of evidence. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 6, 403–412.
Spitz, H. (1997). Nonconscious Movements: From Mystical Messages to Facilitated Communication. Routledge. ISBN 978-0805825633