Early Intensive
Behavioural Intervention
(EIBI)
EIBI and Lovaas (1987)
UCLA Young Autism Project (YAP) 1970-1984
Early
 Less discrimination between environments
 More likely to generalize and maintain treatment gains
Intensive
 40+ hours per week
Behavioural Intervention
 Using Modern learning theory (Years 1-3)
 Build complex behaviour and suppress pathological
EIBI and Lovaas (1987)
1st year: Reducing self-stimulatory and aggressive
behaviour, teaching imitation, toy play, extending
treatment into family
2nd year: Teaching expressive language, play with
peers, extended to community (preschool)
3rd year: Teaching of appropriate and varied
expression of emotions, reading, writing,
arithmetic, observational learning
Lovaas (1987) Results
Experiment
(n=19)
Control
(n=40)
Normal
47%
2%
Mildly
retarded
40%
45%
Profoundly
retarded
10%
53%
Video
 Autism Behavioural Intervention
Queensland (ABIQ)
 ABIQ.wmv
Neurobiology of Autism
Electrophysiological studies: EEG and ERP
 Neural basis of face processing, non-verbal
Face sensitive ERP component (N170)
 Large negative ERP component with a latency of 170ms
Neurobiology of Autism
Lateralization
 Failure of normal right hemisphere specialization for faces
Face Processing
Autistic Development
Perceptual/Cognitive Hypothesis
 Perceptual binding (extracting), general deficit (FG), and/or
dysfunction of a neural mechanism
Social Motivation Hypothesis (SMH)
 Primary and secondary deficits (all behavioural and
physiological deficits are the result of a deficit in social
motivation)
Social Rewards
“Social motivation impairments are related to difficulties in forming
representations of the reward value of social stimuli” (Dawson,
2005)

Dopamine pathway is activated by social rewards
Reward value  Motivation 
Attention to faces (exposure+) 
Specialization
Implications for EIBI
 Make social interaction more rewarding
and meaningful
 Interventions using ABA and EIBI
reward using conditioned reinforcement
EIBI may facilitate the development of the face processing system
Criticism of EIBI




Methodological problems in research
Which children are good candidates?
Ethical concerns
Financial matters
Future Research
 Using MRI without sedation to assess brain
development in high-risk infant siblings
(Zwaigenbaum et al., 2005)
 Behavioural enrichment and behavioural motivation
to study brain plasticity (Kilgard)
 EIBI to reach normal brain functioning in terms of
neural speed and cortical specialization (Dawson et
al., 2005)