History
Initial attempts to treat autism were mostly unsuccessful and in the 1960s researchers began to focus on behavioral intervention therapies. Though these interventions enjoyed a degree of success, limitations included long hours needed for thousands of trials and limited generalization to new environments. Drs. Lynn and Robert Koegel incorporated ideas from the natural language procedures to develop verbal communication in children with autism. They theorized that, if effort was focused on certain pivotal responses, intervention would be more successful and efficient. As they saw it, developing these pivotal behaviors would result in widespread improvement in other areas. Pivotal Response Theory (PRT) is based on a belief that autism is a much less severe disorder than originally thought.
Read more about this topic: Pivotal Response Therapy
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)