Autism - Early Intensive Behavioural Treatment

Question 1

Basics of EIBI

Answer 1

Early - therapy for children under 5, greatest success under 2
Intensive - highly structured and involves between 20 and 50 hours a week of one to one therapy ( at home or in school)
Focused on behaviours - uses behaviourist learning techniques to replace unwanted behaviours with desirable ones

Question 2

Elements of EIBI
Several common features

Answer 2

Personnel - delivered by a trained behaviour therapist and is supervised by a qualified professional who measures and monitors child’s development and reviews progress, parents & fam close involved with day to day applications
Target behaviour and goals - three main: communication/ language development, social interaction and self care
Generalisation - strategies used to allow child to practise learned skills in new environments

Question 3

Stages of EIBI

Answer 3

Establish cooperation and reduce tantrums - therapist makes simple requests and reinforces the child cooperative behaviour
Foundational skills - several skills developed. Both simple and complex e.g. making face expressions and developing play skills
Early communicative language -receptive language is reinforced begginign w ability to follow instructions and eventually identify objects, people and behaviours
Grammatical language/ early socialisation - putting thoughts intro grammatically correct sentences

Question 4

Research support
Strength
AO3

Answer 4

Meta analysis Reichow et al (2012)
Five studies of EIBI effectiveness, w control group
Children who received EIBI saw sig greater improvements than controls in 10 areas e.g. expression language, socialisation
Shows it is effective for some children e ASD

Question 5

Competing argument
Weakness
AO3

Answer 5

Methodological issues w some studies used
Only one was a Randomised controlled trial where children were randomly allocated groups
Researchers rated overall quality of studies low
Evidence- base supporting EIBI is promising not conclusive

Question 6

Lack of Treatment Fidelity
Weakness
AO3

Answer 6

EIBI therapist can carry out treatments in different ways
Healy and Lyndon (2013) therpist use different techniques and some are outdated and unsupported by evidence
Means it’s hard to work out what the core effective techniques of EIBI are
Makes it hard to conduct meaningful research and highlights need for standardised, high quality training to enhance effectiveness

Question 7

Non specific factors
Weakness
AO3

Answer 7

Sucess of EIBI May be due to factors and not therapy itself
Boucher (2009) incentivised 4 factors - the intensity of the therapy, it’s early implementation, it’s highly structured nature and family involvement
These are independent of the specific behaviourist techniques used in EIBI
Factors that might be found in any successful therapy
Nothing special about therapy that explains effectiveness

Question 8

Application to prevention
AO3

Answer 8

Potential for preventing ASD
Dawson (2008) argues early intervention w children who have ASD can change course of brain dev before full ASD occurs
Optimistic outlook is based on brain plasticity in childhood, combined w advances in other fields such as neuroscience and genetics
Strengths as prevention of ASD would result in huge cost savings and improve quality of life of families and individuals affected