Evidence of Authorship on Messages in Facilitated Communication: A Case Report Using Accelerometry

Facilitated communication (FC) belongs to augmentative and alternative methods of communication. Currently, FC is very rarely and unofficially used with people suffering from verbal/communicative disorders or neurodevelopmental disorders such as intellectual deficiency or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). FC consists of physical support exerted by a facilitator at the hand/wrist/forearm/elbow of a patient/participant, aimed at helping him/her to point at pictures/words, and sometimes to type letters/words on a keyboard. Given most of (but not all) validation studies using control procedures failed to confirm that ASD participants themselves were authoring the messages via FC, this method has been massively disputed and rejected. However, firm and definitive conclusions for/against the validity of FC requires more robust demonstrations, particularly when considering the motor participation of both protagonists. We present here a case report investigating the motor contribution of both protagonists during a typing process using the non-invasive technique of accelerometry. A 17-year-old boy diagnosed with congenital deafness, ASD, and developmental delay, and his facilitator, were equipped with small accelerometers fixed on their index finger, aimed at transforming index acceleration along the three spatial axes into electric signals. Typing on a PC keyboard was performed under three support conditions: hand support, forearm support, elbow support, plus a solo-typing condition. Accelerometric signals and video data were recorded during four FC sessions. We measured and compared the typing speed, the number/percentage of acceleration peaks produced by the participant or by the facilitator first, and those of “signal under detection threshold” in the facilitator, the time offset between acceleration peaks of both protagonists, and the difference of the amount of acceleration between them, across the different support conditions. Results indicate that in the hand support, most of the time, acceleration motions of the participant's index finger preceded those of the facilitator's index finger. Then, the more distal the physical support (i.e., farer from the participant's hand), the slower the speed of typing, the higher the percentage of “signal under detection threshold” in the facilitator, the bigger the motor contribution from the participant. Altogether, in all the support conditions, the participant's authorship or, at least, co-authorship on the messages seems warranted. Finally, accelerometry seems relevant to objectivize authorship or co-authorship in FC and delineate various forms of FC.