Abstract
Infantile autism is a complex disorder which involves abnormalities of development and of behavior, both of which need to be taken into account in planning any type of treatment program. During the 1960s there was an increasing number of reports of the successful use of behavioral techniques in alleviating these many and various problems in individual children. Operant approaches were employed to aid the development of positive or normal features such as imitation, eye contact, social skills, speech usage and communication (Hingtgen et al., 1965, 1967; Hingtgen & Trost, 1966; Lovaas, 1966, 1967; Lovaas et al., 1965b, Metz 1965; McConnell, 1967; Halpern, 1970; Mathis, 1971; Risley & Wolf, 1967; Sloane et al., 1968). Operant procedures were also used to eliminate a wide range of deviant behaviors including self-injury, temper tantrums, aggressive behavior, hyperactivity, encopresis, and negativism (Lovaas et al., 1965a, b, 1966; Tate & Baroff, 1966; Graziano, 1970; Wetzel et al., 1966; Wolf et al., 1964, 1967; Maier, 1971; Marshall, 1966; Sulzbacher & Costello, 1970; Brown & Pace, 1969). It became clear that operant approaches provided a useful set of therapeutic interventions which could achieve fairly rapid results in terms of alteration of specific behaviors, if the child was treated daily by skilled professionals on a one-to-one basis in a well-controlled inpatient setting.
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Hemsley, R. et al. (1978). Treating Autistic Children in a Family Context. In: Rutter, M., Schopler, E. (eds) Autism. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-0787-7_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-0787-7_26
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