Your textbook discusses the issue of facilitated communication and its applicability to assisting children with autism spectrum disorder. One possibility for the early research results was that the children were communicating through the adults who were assisting them. As the text notes, another explanation for the miraculous findings was that the "facilitators" were simply guiding the hands of the children to communicate things that their parents would want to hear. This alternate explanation is consistent with the concept of __________.

replicability
falsifiability
ruling out rival hypotheses
correlation vs. causation

Ruling out rival hypotheses: The term ruling-out-rival hypotheses is defined as the phenomenon that explains the exclusion of any other possible explanations related to a particular claim. Before evaluating a particular psychological claim by an experimenter or a researcher, then he or she should see other plausible related explanations that should be ruled out. For a researcher to believe in something, he or she must look for another explanation which is considered as being disapproved.

In reference to the question, the statement defines the ruling out rival hypotheses.