Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions as Value-Based and Culturally Adapted EBPs for Autistic Individuals

Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs) are child-centered and motivation-based interventions for autistic children. Though they hold great promise due to their naturalistic implementation and focus on children’s strengths, there have been recent calls to improve NDBIs such that they are more aligned with the neurodiversity approach. Central to this argument is the notion that autistic clients and their families should find the intervention acceptable. This chapter describes how NDBIs differ from other behavioral interventions, what their strengths are, and how they can continue to be improved. More specifically, we focus on expanding target NDBI outcomes to include more distal, family centered variables (such as family quality of life); improving the social validity of NDBIs; and how NDBIs can be implemented using a tiered support system.