EIBI: Helping Autistic Children Reach Academic Success

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The staggering number of autistic children has increased 10-17 percent annually. Autism is a complex social disorder that affects a shocking 1 in 110 American children. The cure for autism has yet to be discovered, but multiple treatment methods have been explored. One attempted treatment method involved early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI). The goal towards implementing EIBI methods on pre-school children inflicted with this developmental disorder was to increase the chances of achieving social and academic success. However, autistic symptoms are anything but universal. The EIBI study outcomes varied as widely as the degrees of the disorder due to several extraneous variables. However, showed that children who received EIBI will have a greater chance at reaching academic success. EIBI has been a method of choice in the treatment of Autism for over 30 years, according to the “Two-Year Outcomes for Children with Autism after the Cessation of Early Intensive Behavior Intervention” article in the journal Behavior Modification. The article mentions that this method has popularity throughout the social science realm because EIBI is correlated to positive effects on intellectual and adaptive functioning. According to the authors of this article, EIBI not only has a prominent effect on IQ levels, but this intervention strategy also affects adaptive behavioral patterns, statistically speaking. EIBI is the only early intervention method equipped with data that allows it to be recognized as a potentially sufficient treatment plan.
The ultimate goal fueling the utilization of EIBI is to give autistic children an opportunity to achieve academic success in the mainstream classroom. Children with this social disorder are typically placed in remedial classes or special education. The hope is that children who receive intensive, time-limited EIBI will be able to study in the standard academic setting and ultimately reduce their dependence on societal services during their adult lives.
In the study that is examined throughout the article, children who were put through autistic training were placed in a control group, or comparison group, and an experimental group. EIBI involves the intervention of intellectual functioning, adaptive behavior, and language skills. The experimental group (the group that received the intensive treatment) was then split into sub-groups. The sub-groups were divided between university-supervised intervention and parent-commissioned intervention. Of the 44 children originally tested, 23 participated in a two year follow-up. Seven of the 14 children in the university-supervised group and seven of the nine children in the parent-commissioned group were in the mainstream classroom setting.
The results of the EIBI follow-up study show that the implementation of intensive treatment is correlated to the likelihood that children with an autistic diagnosis will be placed in the mainstream educational setting. However, the subgroups create the problem of recognizing which factors are to be credited with the maintenance of the improvements made by the experimental group.

http://bmo.sagepub.com/content/35/5/427.full.pdf+html