How Motivated Reasoning Enables Support for Facilitated Communication
How do otherwise discerning people promote a scientifically discredited practice like facilitated communication (FC)? The psychological phenomenon called motivated reasoning can help us understand.
Motivated reasoning is the tendency to process information in a manner that leads to desired conclusions. Consider, for example, a person who is against vaccination but for chemotherapy. That person might justify anti-vaccination beliefs by noting that science has been wrong before, by recalling hand-picked examples (children who were vaccinated and subsequently diagnosed with autism), and by believing that nefarious forces fabricate evidence in favor of vaccines. That same person might support chemotherapy with entirely different reasoning, such as trusting science as a reliable source of information, considering the systematic evidence, and assuming that the evidence in favor of chemotherapy is authentic. The person does not notice these opposing forms of justification which precludes any need to justify the inconsistency.
Wanting unicorns to be real, does not make them real. (Photograph by James Lee)
It is easy for people to accuse others of being biased due to motivated reasoning. In the case of FC, both anti- and pro-FC supporters can accuse the other group of broadly allowing desire to cloud reason. The potential for promoting false scientific claims is the main reason that scientific claims need to be examined thoroughly. Decades of carefully constructed evidence discredit FC. More to the point, the history of FC reveals how a methodological flaw created support for FC, and how motivated reasoning shaped the ongoing promotion of FC.
To recap, FC is a discredited communication practice where a facilitator plays a physical role in guiding communications purportedly provided by persons with intellectual disabilities. A common form of FC involves a facilitator supporting the wrist of a person subjected to FC as that person types on a letterboard. Supporters will sometimes describe communication processes that allow facilitator influence using other terms like rapid prompting method, supported typing, or spelling to communicate.
Initial support for FC was based on demonstrations showing that FC pairs could generate messages with greater intellectual sophistication than the same persons with intellectual disabilities could generate without FC. FC supporters used this methodology to claim that FC reveals hidden intelligence in persons with intellectual disabilities. Unfortunately, these early FC promotions allowed facilitators to be aware of the information that persons with intellectual disabilities might sensibly convey. This left open the possibility that facilitators were unintentionally authoring the messages attributed to persons subjected to FC.
To that point, research conducted primarily in the early 1990s showed undeniable evidence that facilitators were knowingly or unknowingly authoring FC-generated messages. Reportedly successful FC pairs could not provide simple information – like an object depicted in a picture – when facilitators were blinded to the correct responses. Research also demonstrated that novices taught to serve as facilitators could wrongly attribute their FC-generated messages to confederates who did not participate in the process.
The incontrovertible evidence of facilitator authorship nullified the entirety of the evidence that had been used to support FC. Facilitator authorship also explained how FC could work even when persons subjected to FC were looking away from the communication process.
The facilitator’s gaze is fixed on the keyboard while the person being facilitated looks away from the activity during an FC session. (Saved by Typing, 2014).
Furthermore, facilitator authorship clarified the harm that can accompany FC. Facilitator authorship meant that nonverbal persons’ genuine forms of communication were being replaced by facilitators’ impressions about what they wished to communicate. False notions of hidden intelligence, which was in reality facilitator intelligence, pushed nonverbal persons into inappropriate educational and non-educational settings. Facilitator authorship also explained the false accusations of sexual molestation created by FC.
In this context, the appropriate scientific response to the evidence demonstrating facilitator authorship would have been to suspend FC until researchers could demonstrate that FC was reliable. After all, FC was known to be harmful, but not known to be at all beneficial. Yet FC continued. FC promoters were already committed to FC. They developed a set of arguments to explain how FC could be legitimate, even without scientific evidence that it was legitimate. FC proponents argued that FC pairs could be producing effective FC, even though nobody validated these supposedly successful pairings. FC proponents also argued that the testing conditions created anxiety that disrupts FC, suggesting that FC might only work when it isn’t being tested.
The fundamental problems with FC haven’t changed. FC proponents have had decades to provide evidence that FC reliably improves communication without the possibility of facilitator influence. To illustrate, FC supporters could demonstrate that persons with intellectual disabilities can share simple information using FC, like an object presented to them privately, when they were unable to do so without FC. Nobody has provided any evidence of this kind. However, FC still generates harm by subverting authentic forms of communication, by encouraging inappropriate settings for persons with intellectual disabilities, and by creating false accusations of sexual molestation.
Supporters nevertheless continue to promote FC by pointing to poorly controlled research that allows facilitator influence and by neglecting the fundamental problems that discredit FC. They also develop frivolous updates to FC, like having facilitators hold letterboards, that still allow facilitators to influence the communication process. Once newcomers invest emotionally in FC, motivated reasoning makes it difficult for them to recognize that there is no compelling evidence to support FC and that promoting FC on the presumption that it works is scientifically inappropriate. In contrast to this folk promotion of FC, several scientific organizations have developed position statements against FC (e.g., American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, American Psychological Association, and American Speech-Language-Hearing Association).
In an RPM session, the client appears to be looking above the letter board while the facilitator prompts him to select a letter by gesturing with her left hand. (A Mother’s Courage, 2009)
In summary, motivated reasoning shows us how the desire to believe in FC fuels its ongoing promotion. At the same time, motivated reasoning reminds us to be sympathetic toward FC promoters. Notions like hidden intelligence are appealing and it is difficult for non-experts to appreciate the power of the unconscious movements that fool facilitators and observers. But decades of scientific research show that FC is authored by facilitators, not those subjected to it.
To protect persons with intellectual disabilities and the people who care about them, FC should cease until scientific evidence demonstrates reliable FC. For those of you who are relatively new to FC, please recognize the potential for facilitator authorship and stand against misleading FC promotions. If you are already involved with FC, please consider reducing or suspending your support for FC. There are scientifically credible ways to help people with intellectual disabilities.
References
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Brasier, L. L. (2015, June 1). Oakland to pay Wendrows $2M for false sex allegations. Detroit Free Press. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2015/06/01/wendrow-julian-thal-facilitated-communication-oakland-county-dave-gorcyca/28320065/
Burgess, C. A., Kirsch, I., Shane, H., Niederauer, K. L., Graham, S. M., & Bacon, A. (1998). Facilitated communication as an ideomotor response. Psychological Science, 9(1), 71-74. https://doi.org/10.1111%2F1467-9280.00013
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Mostert, M. P. (2010). Facilitated communication and its legitimacy—twenty-first century developments. Exceptionality, 18(1), 31-41. https://doi.org/10.1080/09362830903462524
Siegel, B. (1995). Brief report: Assessing allegations of sexual molestation made through facilitated communication. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 25(3), 319-326. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02179293
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