ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about the groundbreaking pioneer of autism treatment, Dr. Ole Ivar Lovaas and his approach to autism. Lovaas' approach to autism challenged the prevailing notions of the time. In the twentieth century, autism treatment took a psychoanalytic approach. Treatment involved children's removal from their family home to an institution where they received play therapy while mothers received psychoanalysis. Lovaas published the first comprehensive curriculum for educating children with autism, commonly referred to as The ME Book. This comprehensive curriculum covered all the skills, across domains of development, and included the stipulation that children needed to participate in their homes, schools, and communities. The teaching approach, discrete trial teaching (DTT), is one way of teaching using the principles of applied behavior analysis (ABA) and is the term many people probably associate with autism treatment. The ABA principles underlying Lovaas' approach to intervention can be implemented with variations in dose and dose form.
