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[kaysixteen]

What we have here is a guy who certainly cannot speak or make intelligible physical actions, but someone has rigged up some sort of assisted communication ouija board and tells us what this man is supposedly saying.  I recall a Law and Order ep from the mid-90s where some quack child psychiatrist was accused of abuse, and his defense was a severely retarded noncommunicative boy who supposedly had been taught to communicate with such a device, by said quack.  His mother certainly very much wanted to believe her son was not the mental vegetable she had always thought he was, but, in order to prosecute the man for  having caused the death of another such boy in his facility, McCoy was forced to put the young man and his mother, using their 'device, o n the stand, and examine him to see what he really 'knew'.  The results were predictable.  I am not necessarily saying there is nothing to this Belgian story, but how can it be objectively verified?

[barcrossliar]

What we have here is a guy who certainly cannot speak or make intelligible physical actions, but someone has rigged up some sort of assisted communication ouija board and tells us what this man is supposedly saying.  I recall a Law and Order ep from the mid-90s where some quack child psychiatrist was accused of abuse, and his defense was a severely retarded noncommunicative boy who supposedly had been taught to communicate with such a device, by said quack.  His mother certainly very much wanted to believe her son was not the mental vegetable she had always thought he was, but, in order to prosecute the man for  having caused the death of another such boy in his facility, McCoy was forced to put the young man and his mother, using their 'device, o n the stand, and examine him to see what he really 'knew'.  The results were predictable.  I am not necessarily saying there is nothing to this Belgian story, but how can it be objectively verified?

The same way they did on L&O.  Show patient picture, don't show facillitator, ask patient what is in the picture.

[racerboy]

There were some news reports today along these lines--that the patient could only communicate with a certain facilitator.  Suspicious, at least.

[kaysixteen]

This works for questioning patient.  It does not address facilitator claims to be relaying patient's communicative attempts.  If facilitator says patient says 'I am _____________', etc., how can this be verified?

[neutralname]

Aha, the private language argument.  Well, at least a distant cousin.  Remember the beetle in the box. 

[barcrossliar]

This works for questioning patient.  It does not address facilitator claims to be relaying patient's communicative attempts.  If facilitator says patient says 'I am _____________', etc., how can this be verified?

Of course it works for questioning the facilitator's claims.  The facillitator is either receiving info from the patient or not.  Patient is shown unmistakable picture of the dog or house, etc., facillitator is not.  Tester asks patient, "What was in the picture?"  If the message delivered by the facillitator is correct, then she is almost certainly getting the info from the patient.  If she suddenly can't relay correct info from the patient, she probably is not.