Lovaas, O. Ivar

The number of children diagnosed with autism has increased greatly in recent years, for a variety of reasons. In addition, a wide variety of treatment choices exists for parents of children with autism. One of the most commonly sought-after treatments is based on the research of Ole Ivar Lovaas, PhD. Indeed, few [Page 1383]individuals have had as powerful an impact in the field of autism as Lovaas. His early intervention program, which uses a behavioral approach to develop more appropriate behaviors, provides families with a powerful teaching tool with which to educate their children.

Although he is a recognized name in the field of autism, many people know little about the man. Given that his treatment procedure is emulated by thousands of families and dozens of private agencies across the globe, a better understanding of his background and life experiences may provide a better appreciation of the foundations of his interventions.

A Norwegian by birth, Lovaas lived through many life-altering events, including the Second World War, which had a profound influence on his views of humanity. He served in the Norwegian Air Force as a young man and never lost his interest in human behavior. He crossed the Atlantic to complete his undergraduate education at Luther College in Iowa. Later, he would receive his PhD at the University of Washington. While in Washington, he studied quantitative and physiological psychology, receiving various predoctoral fellowships and internships between 1953 and 1958. In 1958, Lovaas began his long and distinguished teaching career, becoming Acting Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. In that same year, Lovaas became Clinic Supervisor at the Child Development Clinic in Seattle, where he would further investigate interventions for children with severe cognitive disabilities, including childhood schizophrenia and autism.

In 1961, Lovaas moved south, leaving the University of Washington to become Assistant Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, marking the beginning of a long and prolific career at UCLA, where he continues to lecture to this day. After receiving several federal research grants, Lovaas rapidly progressed from Assistant Professor in 1961 to Full Professor in 1967. He also was given the title of Staff Psychologist at the Neuropsychiatric Institute and became Director of the UCLA Clinic for the Behavioral Treatment of Children in 1963.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Lovaas developed research supporting the benefits in behavior change with the use of behavioral interventions, such as positive reinforcement and punishment. An illustrated 1965 feature article in Life magazine on his initial work with four children with autism brought widespread acclaim and recognition to his research. A commercially produced film based on Lovaas's work and developed by Smith, Kline, and French Laboratories in 1968 was one of the most effective curriculum tools of its day.

Much of Lovaas's early work focused on the acquisition and use of language in atypically developing children and the reduction of self-injurious and other inappropriate behavior, particularly with those children diagnosed with schizophrenia or autism. His research stressed not only the benefits derived from intervention but, just as importantly, the limitations of the treatment. For example, most of the intervention was done in a laboratory setting, with limited opportunity for the generalization of newly acquired skills in different contexts. The parents of the children were not trained in the techniques used in the laboratory, which led to problems in the generalization of behaviors across people. Also, the intervention needed to target more than just language for these children, as other domains (play, aggressive behavior, etc.) were also in need of improvement.

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