Ole Ivar Lovaas, pioneer in treatment for autism, dies at 83

Ole Ivar Lovaas, 83, a psychology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who pioneered one of the standard treatments for autism, died Aug. 2 at a hospital in Lancaster, Calif. He had been recovering from surgery for a broken hip and developed an infection, according to a family member. He learned he had Alzheimer's disease a few years ago.

Dr. Lovaas's 1987 paper "Behavioral Treatment and Normal Educational and Intellectual Functioning in Young Autistic Children" showed for the first time that intensive one-to-one therapy early in life could eliminate symptoms of autism in some cases.

He described some of his research subjects as having "recovered," a concept that remains controversial but appealed to parents and helped launch an industry that provides treatment to a growing number of children.

"Before that [paper], people still felt that there was no hope once your child was diagnosed with autism," said Doreen Granpeesheh, one of his former graduate students who founded the Center for Autism and Related Disorders.

As a professor at UCLA, Dr. Lovaas found his first research subjects in the 1960s in state mental institutions. Using the principles of applied behavioral analysis, which relies on reward and punishment, he helped get some of the children out of state facilities, at least temporarily. It was his first inkling that such children could be helped.

His early work was controversial because it employed electric shocks, delivered with a cattle prod -- a technique that he later renounced in favor of milder methods, including the use of food treats, strict orders and access to favorite activities.

Although he was trained in Freudian theory, Dr. Lovaas became such a firm believer in behavioral therapy that he once told a Los Angeles magazine reporter that he could have turned Adolf Hitler into a nice man had he gotten him to UCLA by age 4 or 5.

Dr. Lovaas, who was born in Norway on May 8, 1927, often said that the Nazis had sparked his interest in human behavior. His middle-class family -- his father was a journalist -- lived in the farm town of Lier, near Oslo, and was forced to work the fields during the Nazi occupation of the 1940s.

Dr. Lovaas, a violinist, came to the United States after the war on a music scholarship to Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He graduated in 1951 and spent the next seven years getting his doctorate in psychology at the University of Washington.

At UCLA, Dr. Lovaas's class on behavior modification was among the most popular undergraduate courses.

His highly regimented treatment for autism broke the basic skills of life into thousands of individual drills. Of 19 children who received 40 hours a week of the treatment, nine were able to go on to mainstream first-grade classrooms and significantly raise their IQ scores. Comparison groups that got fewer hours of therapy, or none at all, fared far worse.

Demand for the therapy was instant and intensified with the 1993 publication of "Let Me Hear Your Voice," a memoir written under a pseudonym by a mother who had used the treatment to help her two autistic children.

His marriage to Beryl Scoles ended in divorce.

Survivors include his second wife, Nina Watthen Lovaas; four children from his first marriage; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

-- Los Angeles Times