AUTISTIC RECOVERY - AN ANALYSIS AND CRITIQUE OF THE EMPIRICAL-EVIDENCE ON THE EARLY INTERVENTION PROJECT

The Early intervention Project (EIP) is a discrete-trial treatment pro gram for young, high-functioning children with autism that claims to p rovide recovery of normal functioning in almost one half of the cases and lead to substantial improvements in an additional 42% of cases. Ma ny school districts across the country are being asked and sued by par ents to provide the EIP for a period of 2 to 3 years. We evaluate the EIP according to threats to experimental validity-namely, internal, ex ternal, and construct validities. The EIP also is evaluated with respe ct to treatment integrity issues, which pose threats to all types of e xperimental validity. Sufficient threats to the experimental validity of the EIP prevent unqualified endorsement of it as a validated treatm ent for children with autism. The most relevant and serious threats to validity for school districts are those of external validity. Given t he background, training, resources/supports, and supervision provided in the original EIP investigation, it probably cannot be exported to s chool districts with fidelity and is unlikely to produce results simil ar to those claimed by the EIP authors (Lovaas, 1987, 1993; McEachin, Smith, & Lovaas, 1993; Smith, McEachin, & Lovaas, 1993). School distri cts are advised to consider the experimental nature of the NP program before agreeing to its adoption for any children with autism and to ex amine other intervention alternatives.