The Kids Who Beat Autism
The idea that autistic people could recover first took hold in 1987, after O. Ivar Lovaas, the pioneer of A.B.A., published a study in which he provided 19 autistic preschoolers with more than 40 hours a week of one-on-one A.B.A., using its highly structured regimen of prompts, rewards and punishments to reinforce certain behaviors and “extinguish” others.