Falsified (In)Competence

• In Event: 34.072 - Disrupting Boundaries of Disability While Reimagining Educational Justice Landscapes: Contentions in Disability Studies in Education

Abstract

Objectives: I examine the construction of communicative (in)competence (Dindar, 2017) by analyzing studies, meta-analysis, and survey papers that seek to delegitimize facilitated communication (FC) as a valid medium of expression for non-speaking autistic people and disabled people with sensorimotor coordination impairments. By analyzing inconsistencies in methodology, and exploring discontinuities between data interpretations and experiences with FC users, I expose a rhetorical trap in which the communicator

is presumed incapable and thus is unable to provide data which refutes this falsified incompetence. Prior work from the Institute on Communication and Inclusion, as well as testimonials from FC users (e.g., Savarese, 2009) were used to hold positivistic researchers accountable for the material and spiritual consequences of their quest to articulate (in)competence at the expense of non-speaking people’s access to communication.

Theoretical Framework: This paper draws from disability studies literature and autism studies, particularly scholarly materials that analyze a data set of testimonials from non-speaking autistic participants, to contend with the construction of communicative (in)competence in quantitative autism research design (Dindar, Lindblom, and Kärnä, 2017). Overall, this paper aims at exposing and disrupting the primacy of positivist research studies on autism and their construction of FC users as incapable of ‘intelligible’ or ‘valuable’ forms of expression.

Data Sources: A systematic review of the previous five years of published FC research, meta-analysis, and surveys are examined. Papers with both validative and refutative results were be examined for the ways in which they rhetorically construct participants. I then interrogated the selection of data channels for analysis within the methodology between pro- and anti- FC groups.

Method: Papers were coded according to whether they validated or refuted the efficacy of facilitated communication, and whether they addressed the more crucial issue of presuming competence. Language used to describe participants, disability groups, and communication methods, are compared between pro- and anti-FC papers. Drawing from the example set by Dindar et al. (2017), data channels are evaluated for how they might limit the interpretation of participant intent, affect, personality, and humanity.

Findings: Preliminary examinations reviewed research has shown distinct bias against qualitative data analysis. Such findings fail to account for the lack of generalizability to the daily life of participants, and fail they hold themselves accountable to offering or even exploring a suitable alternative form of expression. Studies which determine no empirical support for FC construct their participants as incapable of communication via any medium. Thus it is not FC they are invalidating, but the humanity of their subjects.

Significance: The Facilitated Communication literature represents a micro-site of “post-truth”. It’s subjects challenge us to upend our assumptions of what competence looks, sounds, and feels like (Ashby, 2011). FC supporters challenge us to critically examine what or who makes science objective, and who benefits from the position of objectivity. FC detractors challenge us to remember that statistics/quantitative measurements are blunt instrument that maim as they bin, and erase as they generalize. There can be no truth in a positivist science that that withholds an individual’s access based on the statistical aggregate of strangers.

Author

• Rua Mae Williams, University of Florida