Timeline: The Politics & Marketing Behind The Autism Epidemic

Timeline: The Politics & Marketing Behind The Autism Epidemic

Timeline: Early Years | 80s | 90s | 00s | 10s | 20s

Note: The timeline is still in the process of being updated. [Last updated September 1, 2022]

1959

• 1959

  ABA Origins

  The beginnings of ABA can be traced back to Teodoro Ayllon and Jack Michael’s study “The psychiatric nurse as a behavioral engineer” (1959) that they published in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB). 

  Ayllon and Michael were training the staff and nurses at a psychiatric hospital how to use a token economy based on the principles of operant conditioning for patients with schizophrenia and intellectual disability, which led to researchers at the University of Kansas to start the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) in 1968.

1965

• 1965

  Autism Society of America founded by by Bernard Rimland and Ivar Lovaas together with Ruth C. Sullivan. 

  This is a parent-founded autism organization.

• 1965

  Lovaas published articles for his behavior system.

  In 1965, Lovaas published a series of articles that outlined his system for coding observed behaviors, described a pioneering investigation of the antecedents and consequences that maintained a problem behavior^. and relied upon the methods of errorless learning that was initially devised by Charles Ferster to teach nonverbal children to speak.

  Lovaas also described how to use social (secondary) reinforcers, teach children to imitate, and what interventions (including electric shocks) may be used to reduce aggression and life-threatening self-injury.

1968

• 1968

  Researchers at the University of Kansas to start the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA).

  Notable graduate students from the University of Washington include Robert Wahler, James Sherman, and Ivar Lovaas. Lovaas established the UCLA Young Autism Project while teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles.

1975

• 1975

  Efficacy Research Institute launched.*

  Founders: Vincent Strully, Dudley Orr, John Pangburn

  * Changes name in 1986 to New England Center for Autism