Obituary: O Ivar Lovaas, psychology professor

Published on Tuesday 24 August 2010 20:23

Psychology professor and pioneer of popular therapy to help treat autism in children

Ivar Lovaas, psychologist.

Born: 8 May, 1927, in Lier, Norway.

Died 2 August, 2010, in Lancaster, California, aged 83.

OIvar Lovaas was a psychologist who developed one of the most widely used therapies for children with autism, and in doing so helped change the treatment and the public perception of the condition.

At his death, Lovaas was an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he had taught since 1961.

He was the first researcher to suggest that, for at least some children, autism is treatable. His work came to wide attention in 1987, when he published a scholarly article titled "Behavioral Treatment and Normal Educational and Intellectual Functioning in Young Autistic Children".

In it, he reported that after rigorous training, some autistic children had been able to catch up with their peers and function in conventional classrooms.

"His work first of all showed that the kids were teachable," said Tristram Smith, a psychologist at the University of Rochester. "It was also very important in deinstitutionalisation, showing that you could teach the kinds of skills that the kids needed to succeed at home and in the community."

In the 1960s, when Lovaas began studying autism, the prevailing Freudian view rooted the condition in neurosis. Autistic children, if they were treated at all, were given psychotherapy, to little discernible effect. Others, including many of Lovaas's early research subjects, were misdiagnosed as schizophrenic or mentally retarded and consigned to institutions. Lovaas, by contrast, took a behaviourist approach, proposing that autism might be ameliorated through a rigorous one-on-one programme of behaviour modification. The programme he devised, known as the Lovaas model, took as its starting point a discipline known as applied behaviour analysis.

Drawing on the work of behavioural psychologists such as Ivan Pavlov and BF Skinner, applied behaviour analysis, or ABA, uses behaviour-modification techniques to treat social and psychological problems such as drug abuse and mental illness.

The Lovaas model emphasised intensive repetition: the autistic child worked 35 to 40 hours a week with a teacher or parent trained in the method. It also stressed early intervention, with children ideally starting therapy before the age of three and a half.

At the heart of the model was a system of rewards and punishments intended to reinforce appropriate behaviours and discourage inappropriate ones. Social skills were broken down into discrete, learnable units. Hand-washing, for example, would be taught as a series of steps - turning on the tap, using the soap, drying the hands - to be mastered individually.

Thus, with training, the autistic child might progress from learning a simple task such as sitting quietly in a chair to more difficult ones such as making eye contact and, ultimately, speaking freely and intelligibly.

Early on, Lovaas's method was criticised as being overly punitive. In 1965, Life magazine reported on the work he and his associates were doing with autistic children. To deter unwanted behaviours such as shrieking, head-banging and self-mutilation, the article reported, researchers might slap the children or, in rare cases, administer electric shocks.

Over time these practices were eliminated. Today, the Lovaas model uses only positive reinforcements, such as food, affection and tickling, to reward appropriate behaviours.

Lovaas's 1987 article, published in The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in the US, reported the results of a study of autistic two and three-year-olds he began in 1970. At the outset, most of the children functioned at a low level and spoke little, if at all.

Nineteen received 40 hours a week of intensive behaviour modification for several years. By the time they were seven, nine members of this group showed a gain of 30 IQ points and could function in regular classrooms. Children in the control group, who got only ten hours of weekly therapy, showed little intellectual or social change.

In a follow-up report, published in 1993, Lovaas re-examined the nine successful children when they were 13. Eight were still able to function in regular classes and had maintained the gain in IQ.

Although Lovaas therapy can be extremely costly, parents of autistic children clamoured for it. In 1995, Lovaas founded the Lovaas Institute, based in Los Angeles, which trains teachers in his method. Today, thousands of children are receiving Lovaas therapy.

Ole Ivar Lovaas was born in 1927, in Lier, near Oslo. His father was a journalist, but during the Nazi occupation of Norway the family, Ole included, were forced to become agricultural labourers, working in the fields for ten hours a day.

A violinist, Ole attended Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, on a music scholarship, graduating in 1951. He earned a PhD in psychology from the University of Washington in 1958.

His first marriage, to Beryl Scoles, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Nina Lovaas; four children from his first marriage, a son, three daughters, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.