Ideomotor Response
The ideomotor response is a well-documented phenomenon that involves non-conscious muscle movements. Researchers have linked the phenomenon to such activities as automatic writing, dowsing, using a planchette on the Ouija board, and Facilitated Communication. Most facilitators are unaware of the extent to which these movements effect the facilitation process.
2024
Jarry, Jonathan. (2024, December 13). The Telepathy Tapes Prove We All Want to Believe. McGill Office for Science and Society.
This article discusses a podcast that “documents a journalist’s journey to demonstrate that nonverbal autistic children have supernatural abilities.” However, as Jarry explains, the podcast “takes a credulous stance on research into psi phenomena, failing to mention important studies with clearly negative results and failing to give voice to skeptics familiar with psi testing.”
Vyse, Stuart. (2024, July 29). How Does the Ouija Board Work? Skeptical Inquirer.
This article is an explanation of the “Ouija board phenomenon” and although it focuses most on the Ouija board game, there are ties to Facilitated Communication and the behaviors of facilitators as they (often inadvertently) influence and control letter selection.
2022
Vyse, Stuart. (2022, May 2). The Mind’s Best Trick. In The Uses of Delusion: Why It’s Not Always Rational to Be Rational. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780190079957
2021
Brushwood, Brian, Murphy, Jason, and Diamond, Joe. (2021, October 27). How to Easily Debunk Ouija Board “Ghosts.” The Modern Rogue.
2018
Andersen, M., Nielbo, K.L., Schjoedt, U. et al. (2018). Predictive minds in Ouija board sessions. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. DOI: 10.1007/s11097-018-9585-8
“Our study suggests that successful Ouija board sessions critically depend on joint action…It seems that meaningful responses from the Ouija board are an emergent property of interacting predictive minds that increasingly impose structure on initially random events in the sessions. While early letters in a meaningful Ouija board response appear to occur at random, meaningful word options available to the participants decrease as the response from the Ouija board unfolds. This, in turn, makes it easier for a pair of participants to collectively predict (and unconsciously construct) the responses from the Ouija board. These findings are compatible with research on divinatory practices that claim that such practices are universally characterised by humans imposing meaning and structure on random events (Morgan 2016). Our results add to this by showcasing just how predictive minds in interaction achieve the feat of creating meaningful sensations of external agency.”
Hoffmann, T. (2018, August 7). Ouija board study highlights ineffective treatment for autism. Science Nordic.
This article discusses a study which revealed that people can unconsciously create meaningful words and sentences, while being utterly convinced that the messages were created not by them, but by some other entity. This conclusion has implications for individuals using facilitated communication.
2016
Burke, M. (2016, April). How facilitators control words typed in facilitated communication without realizing it. Daily Orange.
“…a facilitator’s ability to control authorship in FC without noticing is because of an ‘ideomotor effect.’ More commonly referred to as Ouija board effect, it occurs when people have motor activity without being consciously aware of it.”
2015
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
2014
Starr, Robert. (2014, October 23). Ouija board illusion is a result of ideomotor effect. The Daily Texan.
This article reports on the experiment conducted by Burgess, et al., which demonstrated the ideomotor effect on 40 college students who were introduced to facilitated communication for the first time.
2003
Hyman, Ray. (2003, August 26). How people are fooled by ideomotor action. Quackwatch.
This article gives a brief history of the ideomotor response or nonconscious muscle movement and some of its pitfalls as documented from 1852, when psychologist/physiologist William B. Carter labeled it as such. The ideomotor action is associated with dowsing, radionics and medical radiesthesia. facilitated communication, applied kinesiology, and traditional Chinese medicine, and the like. Hyman also includes some common features of ideomotor-based systems: ideomotor action, projection of the operator’s actions to an external force, the cause of the action is attributed to forces new to science and revolutionary in nature, delusions of grandeur (by proponents), delusions of persecution, belief they are immune from the effects of the ideomotor action, and self-sealing belief systems.
Wegner, D.M. and Erskine, J.A.K. (2003, February 27). Voluntary involuntariness: Thought suppression and the regulation of the experience of will. Consciousness and Cognition, 12, 684-694. DOI: 10.1016/s1053-8100(03)00054-0
“Participants were asked to carry out a series of simple tasks while following mental control instructions. In advance of each task, they either suppressed thoughts of their intention to perform the task, concentrated on such thoughts, or monitored their thoughts without trying to change them. Suppression resulted in reduced reports of intentionality as compared to monitoring, and as compared to concentration. There was a weak trend for suppression to enhance reported intentionality for a repetition of the action carried out after suppression instructions had been discontinued.”
Wegner, D.M., Fuller, V.A., and Sparrow, B. (2003, July). Clever hands: uncontrolled intelligence in facilitated communication, Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 85 (1), 5-19. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.85.1.5
This study explored how individuals perceive their contribution in answering questions while attributing authorship of their answers to their communication partner.
1998
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
“Forty college students were taught facilitated communication via a commercially available training videotape. They were then asked to facilitate the communication of a confederate, who was described as developmentally disabled and unable to speak. All 40 participants produced responses that they attributed at least partially to the confederate, and most attributed all of the communication entirely to her… These data support the hypothesis that facilitated communication is an instance of automatic writing, akin to that observed in hypnosis and with Ouija boards, and that the ability to produce automatic writing is more common than previously thought.”
Edelson, S.M., Rimland, B., Berger, C.L., and Billings, D. (1998). Evaluation of a Mechanical Hand-Support for Facilitated Communication. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 28 (2), 153-157. DOI: 10.1023/A:1026044716536
Using a specially designed mechanical support, the researchers sought to determine its effectiveness in assisting FC users in transitioning to independent communication. Results indicated no evidence of independent communication with or without the device
Kerrin, R.G., Murdock, J.Y., Sharpton, W.R., and Jones, N. (1998, Summer). Who’s Doing the Pointing? Investigating Facilitated Communication in a Classroom Setting with Students with Autism. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 13 (2), 73-79. DOI: 10.1177/108835769801300202
Individuals participated in activities with blinded and unblinded conditions. 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.
1997
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
This article documents experiments that were conducted involving a “telepathy game” using a rod with an attached strain gauge. A force from the assistant, which controlled what was spelled through physical support, was measured. It was thus completely possible for any message to appear to be typed with FC regardless of the autistic child's actual knowledge or language ability.
Spitz, H. (1997). Nonconscious Movements: From Mystical Messages to Facilitated Communication. Routledge. ISBN 978-0805825633
This book explores the history of non-conscious (involuntary) muscle movements used as “unwitting instruments for the expression of ideas, wishful thinking, and inner conflict, specifically in the form of facilitated communication in individuals who are severely and profoundly retarded or autistic.”
1994
Green, G. (1994). “Facilitated Communication - Mental Miracle or Sleight of Hand?” Skeptic Magazine.
This article explores the underlying characteristics of the FC movement, the allure of a quick fix to a complicated problem, abuse allegations, and how to test the technique.
1993
Dillon, K. (1993). Facilitated Communication, Autism, and Ouija. The Skeptical Inquirer, 17 (3), 281-287.
The author elaborates upon the parallels between Ouija and FC.
Hall, G.A. (1993). Facilitator control as automatic behavior: A verbal behavior analysis. Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 11, 89-97.
This article analyzes facilitated communication as an instance of automatic verbal behavior, characteristics which appear to present in facilitator behavior.
1981
Sebeok, T.A. and Rosenthal, R. (1981). The Clever Hans Phenomenon: Communication with Horses, Whales, Apes, and People. The New York Academy of Sciences: New York.