Obituary: Child psychologist who pioneered modern behavioral therapy dies

From The New York Times:

Sidney W. Bijou (pictured), who adapted a set of simple reward-based psychological techniques to treat troubled children and in the process helped establish modern behavioral therapy for childhood disorders like autism and attention deficit disorder, died on June 11 at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 100.

He collapsed and died while getting dressed, said his daughter, Jude Bijou, who had been caring for him. News of his death received only local coverage at the time but was widely discussed in professional circles.

Dr. Bijou’s studies, showing that small rewards like a hug or piece of candy, given at the right times, could resolve large behavior problems, shook up the field of child psychology, which in the 1950s and 1960s was still dominated by Freudian thinking.

Therapists had typically tried to understand a difficult child’s drives and motives, often in play therapy, by interpreting the small dramas in the dollhouse or between stuffed animals. Yet there was no good evidence that such approaches were effective, and Dr. Bijou, who had worked under the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner, decided to attack the bad behaviors directly, and by increments.

A disruptive, defiant boy who struggled to hold his tongue earned instant praise; he might get a hug if he started his homework, and a piece of candy if he completed it. If a child became defiant, he would be ignored and perhaps removed from the group altogether for a time — given what parents today would call a “timeout.”

“He was strongly opposed to the idea that punishment could have a positive effect,” said Susan O’Leary, a professor in the clinical psychology department at Stony Brook University, who worked with Dr. Bijou at an experimental preschool classroom at the University of Illinois. “The thinking behind the break, or the timeout, was that if good things were happening in the classroom, then the child would want to participate” and begin to behave more civilly.

In a series of studies, first at the University of Washington and later at the University of Illinois, Dr. Bijou painstakingly documented children’s responses to such rewards, and how those responses could over time transform a child’s life.

One of his most famous studies revealed the simple power of attention: By simply attending to a child when he or she was well behaved, teachers could quickly bring out more such behavior, even from habitually disruptive youngsters.

Other researchers applied these techniques to specific diagnoses; one of them, O. Ivar Lovaas, conducted seminal studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, that found that simple rewards helped children with autism improve their social skills, among other things. The approach is now standard treatment for autism, backed by more evidence than any other therapy.

“Dr. Bijou essentially helped lay the foundation of what now are viewed as standard behavioral interventions for children with a variety of behavior problems,” said William Pelham, a psychologist at the University of Buffalo.

Sidney William Bijou was born Nov. 12, 1908, in Arlington, Md., to Leon Bijou, a tailor, and Lea, a homemaker, and moved with the family to Brooklyn when he was 10. He graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in business in 1933, and later studied psychology, first at Columbia in New York, and later at the University of Iowa, where he earned a Ph.D.

After serving in the Army Air Corps, Dr. Bijou joined Dr. Skinner’s group at the Indiana University in 1946. In 1948 he moved to the University of Washington, where he ran the Institute of Child Development and put Dr. Skinner’s ideas to practical use with troubled youngsters, in experimental classrooms. With a colleague, Donald Baer, he wrote highly influential textbooks on the work, and later established similar behavior-based programs at the University of Illinois, the University of Arizona and the University of Nevada, Reno.

Working in an era when most common childhood diagnoses, like A.D.H.D., were unheard of, Dr. Bijou took on children with all variety of problems, whether drooling, angry outbursts or a refusal to wear glasses. Each child was treated as an individual, his colleagues said; each learned at his or her own pace.

Dr. Bijou’s wife of 67 years, Janet, died in 2000. In addition to his daughter, of Santa Barbara, he is survived by a son, Bob, of Mill Valley, Calif.

The two siblings said their father had practiced at home what he documented in his classroom laboratories: catch children being good, let bad behavior be its own punishment.

Once when his parents were out, 15-year-old Bob Bijou took his father’s car out with a friend for a spin and was arrested by the Bellevue, Wash., police. Father and son spent some time down at the station, where officers suggested several penalties, like delaying the boy’s opportunity to get a license.

“My dad stood up and said, ‘I think he’s already had punishment enough,’ ” said Bob Bijou, who remembered his friend’s being grounded.

“Sometimes it can pay off to have a psychologist for a father.”