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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to my channel, Vice Rhino here. What
Speaker 2: About Bunny is a YouTube channel featuring a family of dogs,
Speaker 2: mostly one named Bunny, that all communicate with those voice
Speaker 2: buttons that I'm sure you've seen before. It's really cute.
Speaker 2: Dog pushes a button, the button says a word like
Speaker 2: outside dog, owner lets the dog outside, and hey, look, Mike,
Speaker 2: dog is talking to me Nido. But are they really
Speaker 2: talking to you? Do they understand what they're doing? Yes?
Speaker 2: Well no, maybe it depends. Let's go. So, if you're unaware,
Speaker 2: there are a bajillion of these social media accounts that
Speaker 2: have their pets communicating with these buttons. What About Bunny
Speaker 2: just happens to be the one that YouTube's algorithm has
Speaker 2: been deciding to show me. But they acknowledge that they
Speaker 2: were inspired by Christina Hunger, a speech language pathologist whose
Speaker 2: dog Stella is known for doing the button thing, and really, well,
Speaker 2: this is a fairly simple idea, it's still kind of genius.
Speaker 2: After all, dogs do have the capacity for understanding at
Speaker 2: least some human speech. My dog Puddles knows quite a
Speaker 2: few words, and has even seemingly figured out some of
Speaker 2: the nuances that go along with certain words. For instance,
Speaker 2: if we say bedtime in the middle of the day,
Speaker 2: she'll completely ignore us, But if we say it at night,
Speaker 2: then she'll go right to her create, usually with an
Speaker 2: annoyed glance in our direction because we stayed up later
Speaker 2: than she would like. So it seems like recording words
Speaker 2: onto buttons that dogs can press, we'll let the dogs
Speaker 2: proactively ask for things that they want instead of waiting
Speaker 2: for us to suggest she needs to go outside. She
Speaker 2: can press a button that says a word that she
Speaker 2: is already associated with going outside, which will residult in
Speaker 2: us letting her outside. And research that as far as
Speaker 2: eye of Filthy Little Aming can tell as pretty rigorous
Speaker 2: based on their methodology, has confirmed that at least for
Speaker 2: the words play and outside, the dogs do actually understand
Speaker 2: the buttons their methodology was actually pretty interesting. They had
Speaker 2: two experimenters go into the house of someone who had
Speaker 2: a button trained dog. The experimenter who would actually push
Speaker 2: the buttons was staying outside while the other one went
Speaker 2: inside and covered the buttons with colored stickers whose color
Speaker 2: was randomized. After that was accomplished, the button pusher would
Speaker 2: come inside put on noise canceling headphones that were playing
Speaker 2: music loud enough for them to not be able to
Speaker 2: hear the first experimenter yelling while standing right next to them.
Speaker 2: The first experimenter would then go into a different room
Speaker 2: and have the headphones, while still blaring the music, tell
Speaker 2: the second experimenter what color button to push. The whole
Speaker 2: thing would be recorded on video, and the videos would
Speaker 2: be shown to other people who were not there at
Speaker 2: the time with no audio, with these people being told
Speaker 2: to analyze the dog's behavior throughout the video. This way,
Speaker 2: the person pressing the button doesn't know what the command
Speaker 2: on the button will be, so they can't inadvertently give
Speaker 2: the dog's body language cues, and the people analyzing the
Speaker 2: video don't know what they're looking for, so they aren't
Speaker 2: imposing their expectations on how they interpret the dog's behavior.
Speaker 2: This elaborate setup, which I actually simplified, there were a
Speaker 2: bunch more procedures that I didn't mention, was put in
Speaker 2: place to avoid the Clever Hans effect. Clever Hans was
Speaker 2: a horse that lived in the early twentieth century. Mathematics
Speaker 2: teacher Wilhelm von Austen spent four years training Hans before
Speaker 2: presenting him to the public. Hans, it was said, could add, subtract, multiply, divide,
Speaker 2: read the clock, identify playing cards, knew the calendar, and
Speaker 2: could even spell. He did all of this through tapping
Speaker 2: his hoof. Numbers are easy, just tap out the right number,
Speaker 2: and for spelling, you just replace a letter with the
Speaker 2: number representing his place in the alphabet, so A is one, bs, two, etc.
Speaker 2: With his ability to spell, he could also communicate. He
Speaker 2: would tap out words, and in so doing would write
Speaker 2: sentences that communicated his thoughts and ideas. He could identify painters.
Speaker 2: He could listen to music and then tell you who
Speaker 2: composed it. He was rigorously tested by skeptics who thought
Speaker 2: the whole thing to be a hoax, but he passed
Speaker 2: those tests with flying colors, even when his trainer was
Speaker 2: at sentence. So couldn't be giving him secret cues. The
Speaker 2: German Board of Education commissioned a group of experts to
Speaker 2: determine if Hans was the genuine article, and they concluded
Speaker 2: that he was enter Oscar Funkst. He had the simple
Speaker 2: yet brilliant idea of switching up the test a bit
Speaker 2: in several ways, and in two scenarios it was found
Speaker 2: that Hans could not perform, first when the question of
Speaker 2: themselves did not know the answer to the question, and
Speaker 2: second when a screen was placed between Hans and the questioner.
Speaker 2: As it turned out, Hans was quite a remarkable horse,
Speaker 2: but not because he could do all the clever tricks
Speaker 2: that people thought he was doing. Rather, he had figured
Speaker 2: out how to read tiny, almost imperceptible muscle movements in
Speaker 2: the face of the person questioning him completely involuntarily. When
Speaker 2: the person knew the answer to the question, their face
Speaker 2: would change to indicate that Hans tapping was approaching the
Speaker 2: point where he would stop if he was getting the
Speaker 2: question right. Hans learned to read these signs and would
Speaker 2: stop at the appropriate time in order to receive the
Speaker 2: reward that came with a correct answer. Remarkable, but not
Speaker 2: horse that can spell out their inner thoughts levels of
Speaker 2: remarkable and definitely don't google how clever Hans died. He
Speaker 2: went to live on a ranch up state where all
Speaker 2: of his needs were lovingly tended to by kind farmers
Speaker 2: with many apples and sugarcubes in hand. And that's why
Speaker 2: when testing a dog's ability to understand words on buttons,
Speaker 2: it was important to make sure that at no point
Speaker 2: would a human who is interacting with the dog have
Speaker 2: any knowledge of what behavior would be expected. It is
Speaker 2: conceivable that a dog could be reading microfacial expressions rather
Speaker 2: than actually understanding what the word on the button means.
Speaker 2: And as mentioned previously, they found in this study that
Speaker 2: dogs do indeed understand the words play and outside, or
Speaker 2: rather the dogs successfully attached those concepts to the words
Speaker 2: that their owners use for them. There was some variability
Speaker 2: in the specific words used, like instead of play, it
Speaker 2: might have been toy. So that's neat, But how would
Speaker 2: that launch the bajillion social media accounts that are out there.
Speaker 2: We've been training dogs to ring a bell to communicate
Speaker 2: that they want to go outside for ages now, but
Speaker 2: I've never seen that be the basis for someone's social media.
Speaker 2: What's the difference here well. The owners who button train
Speaker 2: their dogs will often have large arrays of buttons with
Speaker 2: all sorts of different words on them, and the dogs
Speaker 2: appear to be communicating using multiple button presses.
Speaker 3: What are you doing, nugget.
Speaker 4: Before? See cat and buy? That's right because the cat
Speaker 4: is upstairs. Now cat went up here? Yep, that's where
Speaker 4: it is now.
Speaker 2: See before she could see the cat, but now the
Speaker 2: cat is gone before see cat? Buy? But is this
Speaker 2: really communication? The thing about social media accounts like this
Speaker 2: is that we have no way of knowing how many
Speaker 2: button presses these dogs do throughout the day that aren't
Speaker 2: interesting enough for the owners to post, and with enough presses,
Speaker 2: they are bound to be a few that, through sheer
Speaker 2: random chance, seem to line up with what's going on.
Speaker 2: You can see in many of these videos that there
Speaker 2: is a lot of interpretation going on from the human
Speaker 2: in the scenario, with them guessing what the button presses
Speaker 2: mean and proceeding on the assumption that their guess was correct.
Speaker 5: When what, no, bunny, what do you mean?
Speaker 6: When nobody you mean? When are you going to die?
Speaker 6: When nobody.
Speaker 7: Love you?
Speaker 5: I love you?
Speaker 8: I love you?
Speaker 5: Butes.
Speaker 2: Dogs are smart. I have no doubt that Bunny associates
Speaker 2: some meaning with every single one of her buttons, even
Speaker 2: if it's not the meaning that her owner intended to
Speaker 2: teach her. But I very much doubt that she was
Speaker 2: having an existential crisis there. This seems like a variant
Speaker 2: to the Barnum effect. The Barnum effect is the thing
Speaker 2: that horoscopes rely on. If people think that a vague
Speaker 2: statement pertains to them, they will interpret it as referring
Speaker 2: to something specific. Dog pokes buttons that vaguely gesture in
Speaker 2: a direction that could be interpreted as an existential crisis.
Speaker 2: Owner interprets the button presses as an existential crisis. As
Speaker 2: far as research into a dog's ability to communicate using
Speaker 2: multiple button presses goes, there is some evidence suggesting that
Speaker 2: dogs will choose button combinations non randomly, at least for
Speaker 2: two button combos, But this study was a bit less rigorous.
Speaker 2: It relied on owner's self reporting button press events, so
Speaker 2: as the study authors themselves acknowledge, there may have been
Speaker 2: a bias in the reporting where combinations that the owners
Speaker 2: thought were more interesting, we're also more likely to be
Speaker 2: reported than nonsense ones, thus potentially skewing the data. So Yeah,
Speaker 2: dogs can understand and use buttons to communicate, but the
Speaker 2: extent of that communication is still under investigation. Meanwhile, owners
Speaker 2: are engaging in a sort of combination of confirmation bias
Speaker 2: in the Barnum effect to impose deeper meaning onto their
Speaker 2: conversations with their dogs. At worst, this is just some
Speaker 2: good natured, if misguided fun. Bunny is a good pup
Speaker 2: who deserves all the scritches and if her owner is
Speaker 2: having a good time communicating with her while sharing these
Speaker 2: communications on social media, who am I to rain on
Speaker 2: that parade? And that's the video for today. We're done here.
Speaker 2: Don't look at the run time. This was just an
Speaker 2: excuse for me to talk about some neat research into
Speaker 2: animal cognition with a sprinkling of critical thinking mixed in
Speaker 2: so by Facilitated communication is a technique that is used
Speaker 2: to help nonverbal disabled people, particularly those with autism, communicate.
Speaker 2: The trained facilitator will give the person physical support as
Speaker 2: they point to letters, pictures, or objects on a keyboard
Speaker 2: or post board, and using this method, some of these
Speaker 2: people have been able to do things like graduate college
Speaker 2: with honors. I might add, write books, publish poetry, and
Speaker 2: even give the keynote address at the United Nations for
Speaker 2: World Autism Awareness Day, Advocates of facilitated communication tout its
Speaker 2: ability to bring a voice to the voiceless, helping people
Speaker 2: whose brains work differently to express their deep inner life.
Speaker 2: The idea here is that their fine motor skills aren't
Speaker 2: good enough to type or point to letters on their own,
Speaker 2: so the facilitator allows them to use their arm, which
Speaker 2: they control with gross motor skills, to point to letters
Speaker 2: or symbols that they want.
Speaker 7: What we do is we take the movement ou on
Speaker 7: the five oder of the digits and put it in
Speaker 7: the gross motor of the art because it's so much
Speaker 7: easier to control.
Speaker 2: And this method is how many nonverbal autistic people have
Speaker 2: achieved such major accomplishments. It truly is incredible, literally as in,
Speaker 2: I find it impossible to believe. Now. Don't get me wrong,
Speaker 2: I would love for this to be true. I have
Speaker 2: multiple autistic children, and well none are completely nonverbal. One
Speaker 2: has been in speech there for their whole life, and
Speaker 2: the other does sometimes lose their ability to speak when overstimulated.
Speaker 2: This caused some issues for them growing up. They weren't
Speaker 2: diagnosed until the last couple of years. The psychiatrist we
Speaker 2: took them to originally said that their meltdowns were panic attacks.
Speaker 2: The thing that we needed to do was make sure
Speaker 2: they felt safe and loved, and that would help bring
Speaker 2: them out of the panic attack. Now I'm a literal
Speaker 2: minded guy. In fact, there's a good chance that I
Speaker 2: am also autistic, but adult diagnoses are expensive and there's
Speaker 2: not much point in that for me at the moment.
Speaker 2: But anyway, I took to literally repeating in a calming tone,
Speaker 2: you are safe, you are loved when my child was
Speaker 2: having one of their meltdowns that we thought were panic attacks.
Speaker 2: After a while, they came to be and shared with
Speaker 2: me that when I did that, it actually made things
Speaker 2: worse for them in the moment. I stopped doing that immediately.
Speaker 2: The thing about autistic meltdowns that is different from panic
Speaker 2: attacks is that there's not a lot that you can
Speaker 2: do about them other than prevention. Once a meltdown starts,
Speaker 2: it kind of has to run its course. There are
Speaker 2: things you can do that will make them worse, but
Speaker 2: to make them better, you just basically have to make
Speaker 2: sure that the person is physically safe and away from
Speaker 2: anything that might cause over stimulation and then just wait
Speaker 2: until it's done. Once they got their autism diagnosis, we
Speaker 2: got a lot better at managing the meltdowns, to a
Speaker 2: point where what used to be a twice weekly occurrence
Speaker 2: is now maybe twice a year. But when we still
Speaker 2: thought they were panic attacks, I had inadvertently created an
Speaker 2: association in my child between hearing me say you are
Speaker 2: safe and loved and having a meltdown, which exacerbated the
Speaker 2: meltdowns and made them last longer, and they were able
Speaker 2: to communicate that to me. Now, for the record, I
Speaker 2: asked my kids whether I could share that information with you,
Speaker 2: and they said yes. The people in the videos on
Speaker 2: facilitated communication cannot have given their consent because facilitated communication
Speaker 2: does not work as such. I have as piper to
Speaker 2: blur their faces. I'm telling you this so that you
Speaker 2: know that I can empathize with the caregivers of nonverbal
Speaker 2: autistic people. I have experienced the frustration of not being
Speaker 2: able to communicate with a person that I deeply love
Speaker 2: and is in distress. My frustration was mitigated by the
Speaker 2: fact that they can communicate most of the time, but
Speaker 2: many people don't experience that. They have to live with
Speaker 2: the frustration. So when someone comes along and says, hey,
Speaker 2: not only can your kid communicate, but they're actually quite
Speaker 2: good at it and can write at a very high level,
Speaker 2: that is a compelling message. And I don't blame anyone
Speaker 2: for believing it. I would want to. In preparation for
Speaker 2: this video, I watch some promotional material for various forms
Speaker 2: of facilitated communication, and I have to tell you, sometimes
Speaker 2: it looks convincing. I want to believe it. I really
Speaker 2: would love to learn that a marginalized group has suddenly
Speaker 2: been empowered with the ability to communicate. I want to
Speaker 2: join in and hug the parents who are shedding tears
Speaker 2: of joy upon hearing your child speak to them for
Speaker 2: the first time. But there's one thing that I noticed
Speaker 2: in all of the material that really bothered me. The
Speaker 2: facilitator is always either holding the letter board or is
Speaker 2: in physical contact with the person doing the spelling. If
Speaker 2: the person pointing out the letters is actually spelling, why
Speaker 2: does the facilitator have to be holding the board in
Speaker 2: the air or touching the person's arm as they type.
Speaker 2: To put it bluntly, it is a facilitator doing the communicating,
Speaker 2: not the person pointing at letters. The facilitator is using
Speaker 2: their client in the same way you would use a
Speaker 2: plan chet on a wigi board, guiding them toward the
Speaker 2: letters that they are expecting in answer to whatever questioners
Speaker 2: situation is being discussed. And this isn't just me speculating here.
Speaker 2: It has been extensively studied, and the same effect that
Speaker 2: makes wigi boards seem to work is what makes facilitated
Speaker 2: communication seem to work, the idio motor effect. Also, this
Speaker 2: citation that you see now is to an excellent paper
Speaker 2: written by human rights experts and a former practitioner of
Speaker 2: facilitated communication. It is incredibly thorough and consequently is my
Speaker 2: main source on facilitated communication. I'm not going to leave
Speaker 2: the citation on screen the whole time, so from here
Speaker 2: on out you can just assume that any scientific claims
Speaker 2: I make use this paper as a source unless I
Speaker 2: list a different one. I actually highly recommend reading through
Speaker 2: this paper for yourself, though unfortunately it is behind a paywall,
Speaker 2: and I'm not allowed to recommend using si hub to
Speaker 2: bypass the paywall, so I guess you'll have to pay
Speaker 2: for the article if you want to read it. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the idio motor effect is a phenomenon where our bodies
Speaker 2: can subconsciously move in response to a mental stimulus. An
Speaker 2: easy demonstration is a pendulum being held over two cards,
Speaker 2: one saying yes and one saying no. As the person
Speaker 2: holding the pendulum yes no questions with instructions to not
Speaker 2: move the pendulum, and you'll find that the pendulum will
Speaker 2: still move to the appropriate answers. This phenomenon has been
Speaker 2: well documented since the mid eighteen hundreds. Without being conscious
Speaker 2: of it themselves, the facilitators guide their clients toward the
Speaker 2: letters that they are expecting to see. That doesn't happen
Speaker 2: unless the facilitator is holding the letter board or touching
Speaker 2: their client's arm. This also accounts for the fact that many,
Speaker 2: I'd even argue most facilitators are well meaning people who
Speaker 2: legitimately think that they are helping their clients. But it's
Speaker 2: not just the idiomotor effect. It combines with the Barnum
Speaker 2: effect and confirmation bias to convince even the practitioners that
Speaker 2: facilitated communication works. Incorrect letters will be ignored. Generic Pablum
Speaker 2: statements are interpreted as being deep and meaningful thoughts of
Speaker 2: their clients. I'm going to play a two minute clip
Speaker 2: from the Speller's documentary showing a facilitated communication session. And
Speaker 2: I want you to watch to see how the facilitator
Speaker 2: is guiding the session toward what she is expecting, rather
Speaker 2: than just letting him communicate for for himself, which he
Speaker 2: could do if he were actually using the board to communicate.
Speaker 9: Think of these new letter boards. F G, keep going,
Speaker 9: g Q, keep going on R and keep going with
Speaker 9: your eyes.
Speaker 1: I see you.
Speaker 5: Have to move around, g r E what makes sense?
Speaker 5: What makes sense? G r E.
Speaker 9: Keep your eyes ready with me.
Speaker 4: G r E.
Speaker 9: Uh huh a g r E A great great oh and.
Speaker 8: Make it sense.
Speaker 10: I am look for it, look look look f and.
Speaker 9: Great life, great life.
Speaker 10: What I am, look for it, look for it, look
Speaker 10: for it, look for I.
Speaker 9: Own to much to keep going well not great life.
Speaker 11: I started, I started, I do I have that I
Speaker 11: keep going.
Speaker 9: Is Great life.
Speaker 4: Is g.
Speaker 3: G started g G and keep going. Make it makes
Speaker 3: sense g GJ doesn't make sense to g mm hmm.
Speaker 9: Great life is.
Speaker 10: Wow, you've got that fundy.
Speaker 9: Trust yourself.
Speaker 11: I love that great life is. Look at me for
Speaker 11: a second. You put your eyeing here.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 9: Great life is now. Look at the board. Go oh
Speaker 9: A keep going A and sleach and keep going, keep
Speaker 9: going E.
Speaker 5: And move your eyes. Get that A and move your eyes,
Speaker 5: move your eyes, your eyes.
Speaker 9: The great life is ahead.
Speaker 10: That was my question.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's break this down. The first letters that he
Speaker 2: selected are g q R E K. The facilitator then
Speaker 2: does what is known as a board reset. When the
Speaker 2: client is determined to have lost focus. They will lift
Speaker 2: the board away before bringing it back, sometimes discarding what
Speaker 2: came before, sometimes keeping it.
Speaker 9: You get these new letter hords.
Speaker 1: So far.
Speaker 10: G keep going, g q.
Speaker 5: R and keep going with your eyes.
Speaker 9: Around g r E what makes sense?
Speaker 11: What makes sense?
Speaker 4: G r E.
Speaker 9: Keep your eyes ready with me.
Speaker 2: Following the board reset, the facilitator verbally states the letters
Speaker 2: that have been kept out of g q R E K.
Speaker 2: She kept g R E, g r E. The client
Speaker 2: then gets one more letter before she physically takes the
Speaker 2: pencil that he is using to poke at the board
Speaker 2: away from him in order to use it herself to
Speaker 2: write down g R E A uh.
Speaker 5: Huh A g R.
Speaker 2: In the next segment, he seems to get all the
Speaker 2: letters right on the first try, but you can hear
Speaker 2: her verbally prompting him throughout and after the E in life.
Speaker 2: She performs another board reset.
Speaker 9: Great great, Oh, I am.
Speaker 3: Look for.
Speaker 9: Great life, great life?
Speaker 5: What.
Speaker 2: After this board reset, the client selects io J, at
Speaker 2: which point she once again physically takes his pencil away
Speaker 2: in order to write down great life, and then, upon
Speaker 2: bringing the board back, tells him to start at I.
Speaker 10: I am look for it, look for it, look for it,
Speaker 10: look for if.
Speaker 2: I started I as instructed. He starts with I we
Speaker 2: got I S, and then another board reset.
Speaker 9: Started at starting that I keep going is great life is.
Speaker 2: He then chooses G, followed by a letter that we
Speaker 2: can't see from the camera angle, with her telling him
Speaker 2: to start at G again, so clearly the second letter
Speaker 2: wasn't a good one. When we can see the board again,
Speaker 2: we see him choose G JGS, resulting in her once
Speaker 2: again taking his pencil away so that she can write
Speaker 2: great life is G.
Speaker 4: G started G G.
Speaker 9: And keep going.
Speaker 3: Make it makes sense G GJ doesn't make sense of
Speaker 3: G mm hm.
Speaker 9: Great life is.
Speaker 2: Upon returning the pencil, he seems ready to select another letter,
Speaker 2: but she interrupts that selection by holding the board up
Speaker 2: and telling him to look at her.
Speaker 9: Trust yourself. I love that great life is look at
Speaker 9: me for a second. You pturize it here, thank you.
Speaker 2: When when the board is brought back, he seems to
Speaker 2: spell ahead without error, at which point she somehow knows
Speaker 2: without consulting him, that his message is now finished, ending
Speaker 2: that session.
Speaker 11: A life is at the board to go oh a
Speaker 11: A and and guy M with your eyes A M
Speaker 11: your eyes.
Speaker 9: The great life is ahead was my question.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of questions about this. Why did
Speaker 2: she ignore the letters that she did. Why did she
Speaker 2: keep interrupting him. Why was she using the same pencil
Speaker 2: as him to write the sentence and not using her
Speaker 2: own pencil. Why did she choose to perform board resets
Speaker 2: when she did. Why were so many verbal cues necessary
Speaker 2: if he could spell? Why did she need to keep
Speaker 2: reminding him to make it make sense? Why did she
Speaker 2: choose to end it where she did. He didn't do
Speaker 2: anything to communicate that it was finished. If it were
Speaker 2: coming from him, he may have had more to say.
Speaker 2: All of these are factors that, whether consciously or not,
Speaker 2: result in the facilitator being the person choosing the message
Speaker 2: that is. That's probably the best example in the movie
Speaker 2: of all the ways that facilitators can influence the messages
Speaker 2: that they receive. But there's another example that makes it
Speaker 2: quite clear that the client is not the one communicating. Now,
Speaker 2: this example starts while we're in the midst of a
Speaker 2: voiceover from this person's parent, and it is quite telling.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to keep the beginning part in and
Speaker 2: show you the example of him using the board after.
Speaker 7: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, right, Just
Speaker 7: the absence of science doesn't mean that it's not true.
Speaker 7: So you know, we might have to wait until the
Speaker 7: science comes out. When a child is communicating, you don't
Speaker 7: need the science. So you know, this is one of
Speaker 7: the cases where everybody keeps saying science, science is stupid
Speaker 7: to wait for who I don't want the science. I
Speaker 7: want sick to talk. I don't care. I'm a scientist.
Speaker 7: I don't care about the science. I know that Sid
Speaker 7: is talking, and like SID says, if you don't believe it,
Speaker 7: go get a life.
Speaker 2: So in that example, as his mother is talking about
Speaker 2: how she knows it's him talking and that she doesn't
Speaker 2: need science to prove it, she just knows it, we
Speaker 2: can see him selecting letters while not even looking at
Speaker 2: the board. Yeah, So, as it turns out, it's pretty
Speaker 2: hard to see where someone is looking when you censor
Speaker 2: their face. I guess you're either going to have to
Speaker 2: take my word on that one or else. Go watch
Speaker 2: it in the documercial for yourself, which I don't really
Speaker 2: want to link to, but it is called Spellers, and
Speaker 2: that clip is at about the forty three minute mark.
Speaker 2: If you don't believe me, I feel bad for this woman.
Speaker 2: She has a PhD in chemistry, She knows the value
Speaker 2: of science, she knows how science works, and yet because
Speaker 2: of her desire to communicate with her child, she has
Speaker 2: to set that aside in order to believe something that
Speaker 2: she desperately wants to be true. Now I get it.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that I wouldn't believe it myself were
Speaker 2: I in that situation. But she's saying that we don't
Speaker 2: need to wait for the science, and in that she
Speaker 2: is actually correct. We don't need to wait for it
Speaker 2: because it has been done, and unfortunately, it is rather
Speaker 2: conclusive about the fact that facilitated communication does not work.
Speaker 2: God damn, that's a long title for a study like
Speaker 2: if I titled this video tricking my YouTube audience into
Speaker 2: watching an extended response to the act as a facilitated
Speaker 2: communication by luring them in with a cute dog pressing
Speaker 2: buttons to communicate No, Piper, don't use that for the thumbnail. Now,
Speaker 2: I should probably point out that later on in this
Speaker 2: infomercial masquerading as a documentary, which I shall henceforward be
Speaker 2: referring to as the documercial, we do see one person
Speaker 2: who types on a device that is being held by
Speaker 2: a stand, not by a person.
Speaker 8: Should schools choose to really work with a students strong
Speaker 8: suit autistics will become tomorrow's innovators and leaders. The average
Speaker 8: autistic child can read and smoth by age four, but
Speaker 8: can show it. Imagine the difference we can make in
Speaker 8: the world if told how we learn.
Speaker 2: He's still receiving lots of verbal prompts from the facilitator,
Speaker 2: and there are a lot of cuts, so it is
Speaker 2: conceivable that a bunch of mistakes are on the cutting
Speaker 2: room floor. But here's the There are some nonverbal autistic
Speaker 2: people that can spell sometimes that can be easier for them.
Speaker 2: My own child, when they lose the ability to speak,
Speaker 2: will sometimes communicate their needs by texting me, so I
Speaker 2: have some direct experience with that. But in this documentcial,
Speaker 2: not just with the guy that can type by himself.
Speaker 2: But in almost every case, the main thing that these
Speaker 2: people want to communicate is how awesome the company behind
Speaker 2: the movie is, and how great it is that they
Speaker 2: can use their services, and how they have the potential
Speaker 2: to change the world. Now, how come they never just
Speaker 2: want to watch a movie or have a snack. Even
Speaker 2: the deepest thinkers sometimes have just basic wants and needs
Speaker 2: that they want to communicate, but they are only ever
Speaker 2: shown speaking and feel good statements meant to make you
Speaker 2: appreciate the work that the people behind the documentary are doing.
Speaker 2: To quote a comment that I found on Autistic creator
Speaker 2: London Storms video responding to this documentary quote, my sixteen
Speaker 2: year old nonverbal son gets my phone and types out
Speaker 2: remote treats store. If he typed out some hallmark drivel,
Speaker 2: I would be concerned And really this highlights the fact
Speaker 2: that autism's sectrum disorder is, as the word spectrum suggests,
Speaker 2: a spectrum. Because it's a spectrum, there is bound to
Speaker 2: be some overlap where some people who are nonverbal are
Speaker 2: capable of spelling, but some being capable does not mean
Speaker 2: that all are capable. Research into cognition in verbal nonverbal
Speaker 2: and minimally verbal autistic people. Has shown that the impairment
Speaker 2: in nonverbal autism is not just in language and that
Speaker 2: it cannot be compensated for by nonverbal cognition. So when
Speaker 2: this documercial says that speech is one hundred percent motor
Speaker 2: and language is one hundred percent cognitive, they are essentially
Speaker 2: saying that within every autistic person is a neurotypical person
Speaker 2: who just has problems with movement.
Speaker 10: Speech is one hundred percent motor, language is one hundred
Speaker 10: percent cognitive. And you can tell they're in two different
Speaker 10: areas that bring speeches that here, language is down here.
Speaker 9: So just because the motor.
Speaker 3: And the speech is affected does not mean the language
Speaker 3: is affected.
Speaker 2: They constantly use the language of acceptance to whitewash the
Speaker 2: fact that they are trying to impose the idea of
Speaker 2: what normal should be onto autistic people who are incapable
Speaker 2: of communicating for themselves. But it gets worse. You see
Speaker 2: what I just said about them not being able to
Speaker 2: communicate for themselves is not entirely accurate. In this documentcial,
Speaker 2: there are multiple examples of one of the facilitators physically
Speaker 2: stopping an autistic person from getting up and leaving, you
Speaker 2: know my.
Speaker 10: In a second, finish the sentence H, finish the sentence
Speaker 10: A stay here, and don't.
Speaker 5: Finish the word the word J A N.
Speaker 3: N.
Speaker 2: I would argue that that was them communicating for themselves.
Speaker 2: I do not want to do this, I don't want
Speaker 2: to be here. I am getting up and leaving. But
Speaker 2: they are then forced to sit back down and finish
Speaker 2: whatever sentence was being prompted out of them. The clip
Speaker 2: I'm about to play is hard to watch. There is
Speaker 2: a semi verbal autistic girl doing the spelling, and while crying,
Speaker 2: she communicates very clearly that she is sad, physically hits
Speaker 2: the letter board and asks for her mother. I'm about
Speaker 2: to start playing it. It's thirty seconds long if you
Speaker 2: want to skip ahead, so just skip ahead now.
Speaker 5: I see.
Speaker 7: It and.
Speaker 11: Around age twenty two, I finished public school and missed
Speaker 11: out on real good contact.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I'm going to guess some of your emotions right
Speaker 9: now are because I'm.
Speaker 11: Not experienced too.
Speaker 2: What I saw there was an autistic person using physical
Speaker 2: actions as well as some words to communicate that she
Speaker 2: doesn't want to do that anymore. She wants her mother.
Speaker 2: The facilitator ignores what is being communicated to continue on
Speaker 2: with making her finish the message that we know from
Speaker 2: decades of research is not actually coming from her. These
Speaker 2: people who are passionate advocates for allowing on to people
Speaker 2: to communicate for themselves are ignoring the actual communication in
Speaker 2: favor of forcing them to write sentences that would be
Speaker 2: expected of a neurotypical person, as though they believe there's
Speaker 2: a neurotypical brain trapped inside an autistic body. And the
Speaker 2: worst part is that this isn't even the worst part.
Speaker 2: Remember a little while ago when I brought off the
Speaker 2: fact that several nonverbal autistic people have graduated from college
Speaker 2: given talks at the un written books and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that if you ask the facilitators that enabled that,
Speaker 2: they would tell you that they are happy to have
Speaker 2: allowed a person to communicate with the world in a
Speaker 2: way that has enriched their lives. But has it? What
Speaker 2: if the person who gave the keynote address to the
Speaker 2: un didn't actually want to be there? Is forcing them
Speaker 2: in front of an audience that they don't necessarily want.
Speaker 2: Enriching their life is having them sit down and poke
Speaker 2: at letters long enough to get an entire books worth
Speaker 2: of writing done something that they actually wanted to do.
Speaker 2: When it turns out it was the facilitator writing the
Speaker 2: book the whole time. In advocating for giving these people
Speaker 2: a voice, they are functionally taking their voices away. But
Speaker 2: these examples aren't the only man major life choices that
Speaker 2: are being inadvertently made by facilitators on their behalf. Former
Speaker 2: professor of philosophy at Rutgers University Annas Doublefield was convicted
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen of raping a thirty three year old
Speaker 2: man with cerebral palsy. She had become convinced through her
Speaker 2: use of facilitated communication with him that they were in love.
Speaker 2: Because of facilitated communication, several caregivers have been accused of
Speaker 2: sexual abuse. Former facilitator and now vocal critic of facilitated communication,
Speaker 2: Janis Boyton told the story of how she wound up
Speaker 2: accusing of client's parents of having sexually abused their child, Betsy.
Speaker 2: She convinced the police that she was actually communicating with Betsy,
Speaker 2: which resulted in her removal from her parents along with
Speaker 2: her brother. Their parents had charges filed against them as
Speaker 2: part of the evidence gathering stage of the trial. An
Speaker 2: expert in autism and Communication was brought in and set
Speaker 2: up a double blind experiment to determine if Betsy was
Speaker 2: actually communicating. The experiment he set up began with showing
Speaker 2: Betsy and Janis the same image, then asking Betsy what
Speaker 2: it was. Every time Betsy answered correctly, they progressed to
Speaker 2: showing Betsy and Janis two different images without allowing them
Speaker 2: to see what the other person saw, while maintaining that
Speaker 2: they were still the same image. When Betsy was asked
Speaker 2: what she saw, she invariably answered by naming what Janis saw.
Speaker 2: This was enough to shake Janis out of the delusion
Speaker 2: that she was actually talking to her clients. Janis explained
Speaker 2: that it all started when Betsy became violent in her sessions.
Speaker 2: She began punching and scratching Janis. Clearly Betsy was upset
Speaker 2: about something, so Janis used facilitated communication to figure it out,
Speaker 2: and that's where the stories of sexual abuse came from.
Speaker 2: To quote Janis telling the story for herself. Quote, looking back,
Speaker 2: I understand that these punches and later scratches were the
Speaker 2: clearest communication I had ever received from her. I do
Speaker 2: not know what her thoughts were exactly, but at the
Speaker 2: very least, she signaled me in nonverbal, brutally clear ways
Speaker 2: to stop stop touching her hand, stop sitting so close
Speaker 2: I do not know, just stop. Instead of listening to her,
Speaker 2: I persisted with the facilitation. We've already seen the kind
Speaker 2: of thing that can lead to these sorts of allegations.
Speaker 2: In the documentcial that I've been clipping, a girl saying
Speaker 2: that she's sad, punching the letter board and asking for
Speaker 2: her mother while being ignored by the facilitator. In the
Speaker 2: darkest example of what this can lead to, a mother
Speaker 2: became convinced through facilitated communication that her child had been
Speaker 2: sexually abused by his father and wanted to die. As
Speaker 2: a result, she took him to a hotel room and
Speaker 2: gave him a lethal dose of medication. She was later
Speaker 2: convicted of manslaughter. Proponents of facilitated communication will often attack
Speaker 2: its critics as being people who want to silence the
Speaker 2: voices of those with disabilities. I hope that I've managed
Speaker 2: to communicate throughout this video that that is not my intent.
Speaker 2: But the issue with facilitated communication is that it actively
Speaker 2: silences their voices by replacing the actual communication they engage
Speaker 2: in with whatever the facilitator thinks they want to communicate,
Speaker 2: and then presenting the faux communication to the world as
Speaker 2: being the authentic voice of the nonverbal person. It may
Speaker 2: be difficult to figure out what a nonverbal person wants
Speaker 2: to communicate, but replacing their attempts at communication with your
Speaker 2: imposed guesses is not amplifying their voice. It is doing
Speaker 2: the opposite. I started this video with the button pushing
Speaker 2: dogs because I know that people who believe in facilitated
Speaker 2: communication are likely not willing to consider any criticism. We've
Speaker 2: seen a scientist say point blank that she doesn't care
Speaker 2: about the science here. She just knows that her kid
Speaker 2: is talking to her. Listing a bunch of studies that
Speaker 2: say it doesn't work is not going to convince anyone.
Speaker 2: So my hope was to bring up something similar but
Speaker 2: low stakes. Yeah, it would be neat if our dogs
Speaker 2: could talk to us, but the expectation that people have
Speaker 2: when they adopt a dog is that it won't. So
Speaker 2: when it communicates through the normal dog methods of barking
Speaker 2: in body language, it's fine because that was the expectation.
Speaker 2: But when you have a baby, in the vast majority
Speaker 2: of cases, you are expecting to have a child that
Speaker 2: will develop at about the same pace as the other
Speaker 2: kids and will be able to one day live independently.
Speaker 2: To learn that your child will need full time care
Speaker 2: for their entire life and won't be able to speak
Speaker 2: is incredibly difficult. I'm not saying that they love their
Speaker 2: children less than if they had been neurotypical, but it
Speaker 2: is kind of a taboo when you have a kid
Speaker 2: with disabilities to talk about how it is in fact hard.
Speaker 2: It takes a toll on the parents, and facilitated communication
Speaker 2: promises to relieve some of that pressure, but its promises
Speaker 2: are empty. I understand why people believe it. If you've
Speaker 2: got a nonverbal disabled person in your life, facilitated communication
Speaker 2: is offering you hope. I am offering you nothing, but
Speaker 2: I would argue that nothing based in truth is better
Speaker 2: than hope based on lies. Thanks for watching, Because this
Speaker 2: is a bit of a heavy topic. I'm not doing
Speaker 2: a comment of the day or a silly patron comparison,
Speaker 2: but if you watch this video through and got something
Speaker 2: out of it and consider subscribing. If this is your
Speaker 2: first video of mine, maybe hold off on the Patreon thing.
Speaker 2: This isn't my usual affair, So watch a couple others
Speaker 2: before deciding on that, But thank you for watching this one.
Speaker 2: Hopefully i'll see you next time.
Speaker 6: No