Reaction Paper 1 Questions.
Choose one of the following and answer as completely as possible. You should write a
2-3 page paper, double-spaced. Please be sure to answer all the parts of the question.
1. The " Prisoners of Silence" video profiles Facilitated communication, a new
method that claimed to be able to allow autistic individuals to communicate easily
with others. Using material from class discussion, the Gazzaniga text, and the
""How to Think Straight about Psychology" article, please address the following
questions.
- Please provide a "description" of the phenomenon of facilitated communication - just
what you objectively observed in the video.
-What was the hypothesized explanation given by Bicklin as to why it worked. What are
problems with his explanation?
- How does Biklin address them; How do you respond?
-What empirical tests can you suggest to rule out alternative explanations for the
phenomenon of facilitated communication
- Why is the "controlled experimentation of psychology" necessary to validate such
claims( in other words, why was everyone so ready to believe the results).
ANSWER should include:
Description only, without any leading explanation or subjective comments: Example:
Facilitated communication was touted as a techniques which now allowed severely
autistic individuals (who had previously been considered to be unable to read or write and
to have little intellectual ability) to communicate and produce sophisticated poems and
stories. The technique consisted of providing the autistic individual with a keyboard on
which he or she could type out answers to questions. A facilitator sat next to the autistic
individual, holding the arm as the individual typed. ( 2 pts )
Bicklin’s explanation was that autistic individuals, contrary to all existing data, were
actually quite capable of complex thoughts and language skills. ( 1 pt)
Problems:
1.Why does a facilitator need to hold the individual’s hand when techniques already exist
that allow paralyzed patients, for example, to communicate independently?
2. How did the autistic patients learn to read, write, and develop such sophisticated
thoughts?
3. Bicklin’s view of the capability of autistic individuals is at odds with all other
experimental data ( 3 pts)
Bicklin’s response to those questions:
1. The autistic individuals need the facilitators because the autistic individuals think so
fast that their thoughts would be garbled unless someone actually “slows them down” by
physical means. There is actually no evidence that autistic individuals think at much
greater speeds than others. Even if this were so, it doesn’t explain why they couldn’t use
a computer or other independent means. ( 2 pts )
2. Bicklin claims that autistic individuals learn to read “just like other children” merely
by being exposed to words, yet at the same time, he also claims that autistic individuals
have savant gifts in language. Both his claims have no basis in evidence: children in
fact don’t learn to read by mere exposure, but require direct instruction in phonics and
autistic individuals, while they may have special talents in math or art, have no language
skills. ( 3 pts)
Bicklin claims that the message was produced by the child. He presented no attempt to
rule out the alternative, that the message was, in fact, produced by the facilitator. In order
to rule out the facilitator as producing the message, one needs to compare situations in
which the facilitator knows the answer to the question shown to the child with situations
in which the facilitator doesn’t know the question. If the child is actually producing the
message alone, both situations should produce the same answer. If the facilitator is
producing the message, the correct answer should be typed out only when the facilitator
knows the question. As shown in the video, this is very easy to do. ( 4 pts)
“Controlled experimentation” is necessary because without it, we can not determine
cause and effect. It is especially necessary in situations when there is an emotional
component involved, and parents, teachers, etc blindly want to believe that something
works. ( 3 pts)
Completeness in answering all parts of the question: 2 pts
2. Some children were vaccinated and subsequently diagnosed as autistic. This led
some parents and advocates to claim that the autism was caused by the vaccine.
Using material from class discussion, the Gazzaniga text, and the "How to Lie with
Statistics" article, please address the following questions.
-What would be the post-hoc fallacy from this observation?
-What are all the possible explanations for this co-occurrence ( Hint: follow the example
used in class and in the Huff Article)?
-What, if anything, can we say about the causal relationship between autism and
vaccination?
-How do confirmation bias and selective recall affect our perception of the relationship
between autism and the vaccine?
-How, specifically, might you rule out the alternate explanations and conclusively
demonstrate that the vaccines do, in fact, cause autism?
ANSWER should include:
Definition of post-hoc fallacy( tendency to immediately believe that because two events
occur together, the first must cause the second). In the autism case, the post-hoc fallacy
is believing that the vaccine caused autism, without considering other explanations for
the co-occurrence. ( 2 pts)
Possible explanations for co-occurrence of vaccine and autism
1. Simple Coincidence: most likely if small number of events; likely because
recommended age to get vaccination is same as age at which symptoms
normally first appear.
2. Events are actually correlated and may be causal ( will always appear
together) but we can’t determine direction of causality just from observations.
In the example in class, smoking and GPA are correlated, but it could be that
smoking causes low GPA or vice versa. Maybe parents vaccinate their
children after they see symptoms which are later diagnosed as autism.
3. There is a third variable causing both autism and vaccination- possibility is
that social class/parental education may affect both likelihood of autism in
offspring and vaccination. ( 6 pts)
The observation that sometimes vaccinations and autism occur in the same individuals
does not allow us to make ANY causal conclusion. (2 pts)
Both confirmation bias and selective recall prevent us from examining all the evidence.
Conformation bias means that, if a parent believes that autism is caused by vaccines, that
parent would pay attention only to published articles, media stories, anecdotes that
support that belief , while ignoring any research, articles, etc that disprove it. Selective
recall would mean that parents might selectively “forget” any early signs of autistic
behavior before the vaccine and only remember their child’s normal behavior, thus
perpetuating the belief that the child was normal before the vaccine. ( 4 pts)
The only way to conclusively determine is the vaccine causes autism is to conduct an
experiment- one in which children are randomly assigned to 2 groups. The experimental
group would be given the vaccine; the control group would not be given the vaccine. The
number of children later being diagnosed as autistic would be compared. If subjects in the
group given a vaccine show a statistically higher chance of developing autism , we can
say that vaccines cause autism. Of course, this doesn’t rule out other causes and is not
ethical, so it couldn’t actually be done. ( 4 pts)
Completeness: answering all parts of the question: 2 pts