Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI) for Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD): A Systematic Review

Abstract

Early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) is one of the most widely used treatments for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The purpose of our review was to examine the research on EIBI. We found a total of five studies that compared EIBI to generic special education services for children with ASD in schools. Only one study randomly assigned children to a treatment or comparison group, which is considered the 'gold standard' for research. The other four studies used parent preference to assign children to groups. We examined and compared the results of all five studies. A total of 203 children (all were younger than six years old when they started treatment) were included in the five studies. We found that children receiving the EIBI treatment performed better than children in the comparison groups after about two years of treatment on tests of adaptive behavior (behaviors that increase independence and the ability to adapt to one's environment), intelligence, social skills, communication and language, autism symptoms, and quality of life. The evidence supports the use of EIBI for some children with ASD. However, the quality of this evidence is low as only a small number of children were involved in the studies and only one study randomly assigned children to groups.