| The purpose of the current research was to retrospectively compare the progress of two groups of children who received a specific style of intensive therapy from the Autism Intervention Program (AIP) in Sudbury, Ontario. Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI) is a therapy designed for young children with autism based on Applied Behaviour Analysis principles. The original model of IBI utilized an approach based on Ivar Lovaas' work, which emphasized discrete trial teaching to teach readiness skills such as attention, compliance, imitation and labelling. The Lovaas approach was used for several years in the Sudbury Autism Intervention Program from 2000 -- 2005. Another approach was then built into the existing programming that was based on Skinner's theory of Verbal Behaviour (VB). The VB principles focused on teaching functional language skills in the natural environment as well as the generalization and maintenance of the mastered skills. The two groups of children from the Autism Intervention Program were compared on pre to post progress using three measures: severity of autism symptoms, adaptive skills and learning rate. Both groups improved on measures of autism symptoms, adaptive skills and developmental rate. Initial group differences make it difficult to properly compare the two programs. More research in the area of intensive applications of verbal behaviour is needed. |
