Moved deeply I am. Autistic language in texts produced with FC

Using texts produced through Facilitated Communication (FC), this work is aimed at identifying the characteristic features of the language used by autistic subjects and understanding when these distinctive elements may distinguish it from the language of facilitators. Preliminary results shows that autistic subjects actually use a special style of writing; this finding supports the hypothesis that texts are the fruit of individual production of autistic subjects, not inevitably influenced by facilitators. This first work, based on a restricted sample which is not necessarily representative, is important because it has permitted to better specify criteria by which subjects, texts, analyses to carry out and software to be employed will be chosen in future studies. Such a protocol may be later applied to a broader interdisciplinary project involving linguistics, statistics, computer science, pedagogy, neurology, psychology, social sciences and ethical-philosophy. This new project, named “EASIEST” (Autistic Expression: Interdisciplinary Study with Statistic-Textual data processing) is based on the idea that in the specific case of autism, each form of communication represents a resource to be evaluated even if this seems atypical and controversial.