Lovaas Institute for Early Intervention (LIFE)

For many years, O. Ivar Lovaas ran a small clinic for children with autism through the department of psychology at UCLA, with undergraduate students providing most of the direct instruction. Throughout the 1970s, the clinic enrolled just a few children in treatment at a time. By the early 1980s, the active caseload had increased to about 5-10 children, and this number rose slowly over the next few years. However, after the publication of Lovaas's landmark study of early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) in 1987, followed by an extraordinary firsthand account of one family's experience with the intervention (Maurice, 1993), Lovaas began receiving more requests for treatment in a single day than he had previously received over an entire year.