A brief history of behavioural approaches in neuropsychological rehabilitation

In 1977, Lane published a detailed account of Itard’s work with Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron, in the eighteenth century. Many of the methods adopted by Itard to teach Victor certain skills were later incorporated into behaviour modification techniques. Itard used approximations that today we would call shaping; he identified the component parts of complex activities and taught the individual parts that today we would call chaining; and he was concerned with limitation and generalisation, which are widely used today in the teaching of people with learning disability. Lane (1977) concludes that, “his [Itard’s] armamentarium…anticipated that of modern behavioural modification by nearly two centuries” (p. 165).