Increasing attention is being paid to biological causes of learning disabilities, and many studies have been mode associating minor physical anomalies (MPAs) with disease, hyperkinesis in boys, and hypokinesis in girls. In an examination of 1,046 children, low-income children had more MPAs than those from middle-income, while middle income children with behavior disorders had as many MPAs as low-income pupils. Learning disabilities and emotional illness were associated with increasing MPAs. Nutrition, pollution, and disease may play a larger role in the etiology of learning disabilities than has been fashionable to assume. A high count of MPAs should suggest the involvement of subclinical disease in any learning disability.
In the 1960s, behavior therapy techniques were emerging from the laboratory. These techniques were proving successful in changing a variety of behavioral problems. In the area of psychiatric rehabilitation, Quirk learned to apply Mary Cover Jones' method of desensitization to psychotics despite Wolpe's self-reported inability to make Reciprocal Inhibition Therapy (RIT) work with psychotics. Von Hilsheimer suggested that he monitor stress by Galvanic Skin Resistance (GSR) and Quirk developed a library of lanternslides to substitute for verbal statements in the Wolpe hierarchies of stressful stimuli. He automated this method and named it. SCARS (Stimulus Conditioned Autonomic Response Suppression). This method was later used in offender rehabilation with correctional populations. This paper reviews this history. Quirk then applied the same methods and Sterman's EEG biofeedback training (increasing SMR at C-3/C-4) in a pilot study of 40 matched pairs of jailed felons at the Ontario Correctional Institute (OCI) near Toronto, Canada; and in a larger pilot study of 110 matched pairs. From 1970 through 1995 Quirk and von Hilsheimer trained 2776 felons at the OCI by this combined method (temperature, GSR and EEG). 15% were rearrested in the 3 years following release. This compares well to the range of re-arrest in studies summarized by Alter et al (1996) -42 % to 78%. This line of research represents an early beginning to the field of applied behavioral neurology and the work has strong implications for behavior analysts treating offenders today.
The term “minimal brain damage” (MBD) is evaluated in the light of several experiments: “no treatment” in a democratic existential children's community; the effect of psychic energizers on skills thought to be deficient due to MBD; electrosleep; biofeedback training for alpha wave desynchronization; deconditioning of phobias; and nutritional/medical treatment. These experiments showed statistically significant improvement in skills related to MBD. It is suggested that MBD may be a diagnosis which directs attention to symptoms and that treatment of underlying functions may be superior to present practice.
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