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Facilitated Communication

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After reading the chapters as well as the article assigned, my personal opinion to this is that this technique is a complete waste of money and time on the families part. Facilitated communication is defined as is, “a form of augmentative and alternative communication in which someone physically supports an autistic person and helps him to point at pictures or words.” (Smith, 2009). Now compare this definition with the definition of the ouija effect that is described as, “unconsciously guiding a child’s finger to keys they imagined the child was seeking.” (Gardner, 2001). The two overviews of the product are so similar just worded differently. Additionally, there was a study done where the question was stated with and without a facilitator and when the child was left alone there was response. (Gardner, 2001). Therefore it makes the conclusion that the ouija effect discredits the facilities communication telling individuals that is will not work, it only gives the families false hope. In addition, I believe that it is not the best technique when looking at the fact that if someone who is using the keyboard with the child, they can manipulate what they want to read. Due to this is how many families were …show more content…

Therefore I cannot imagine how many there are of unsupported treatment. Researching this topic a little further, I came across this article called, “Empirically Supported and Unsupported Treatments For Autism Spectrum Disorders”, by Tristram Smith that summed up some of the most popular unsupported treatments. These types of treatments involved Auditory Integration Training which is based on the assumption that child have difficulty perceiving sensory stimuli, Gentle teaching which is focused on making attachment between the child and caregiver, and different forms of complementary and alternative medicine. (Smith,

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