ABA or DIR?

The Developmental, Individual-differences, Relationship-based (DIR) approach is vastly different than Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA).  Parents are often flooded with information and advocacy from professionals and programs and can receive conflicting advice.  Parents can feel the pressure of "making the right choice" which can be very stressful.  We do not have a quick answer to address these difficult decisions, but we always want parents to be fully informed as they are making important decisions for and about their children.  The aim of this short page is to, as simply as possible, outline the fundamental difference between ABA and DIR.  There are many more differences and we would be happy to discuss this further in a free virtual consultation, but we hope the below information will be helpful for you in sorting out the information.

DIR is Based on Understanding & Promoting Human Development

There is no greater feeling than being understood. -Dr. Stanley Greenspan

The goal in DIR is to understand each unique child's individual profile and to then promote the developmental process to help the child reach their fullest potential.  It is a developmental model focused on understanding the biological challenges that may be hindering or interacting with the developmental process and to implement respectful and joyful strategies that support the development of the child's Functional Emotional Developmental Capacities.  This is done through a process that is based on developing an intrinsic desire or motivation to attend, communicate, and learn. 

DIR and DIR professionals see behaviors as primarily a manifestation or result of processes that are going on inside the child's mind and body.  We work to address these core challenges or differences while strengthening the core capacities of relating, communicating, and thinking.  

ABA is Based on Changing Human Behavior

The Behavioral Analyst Certification Board indicates "Behavior analysis is the science of behavior, with a history extending back to the early 20th century. Its guiding philosophy is behaviorism, which is based on the premise that attempts to improve the human condition through behavior change (e.g., education, behavioral health treatment) will be most effective if behavior itself is the primary focus."

The stated goal of ABA in regard to autism, originally developed by Ivar Lovaas, is to "make the autistic child indistinguishable from his non-autistic peers."  This is a goal focused on changing observable behaviors to make the child look "normal" and to comply with social norms.  It is primarily facilitated through the use of extrinsic motivators such as reinforcement and punishment.  

Fundamentally Different in Two Ways

Fundamentally different in how humans are understood.  

Behaviorists believe humans can be fully understood through our behaviors and our learned responses to the world we live.  DIR on the other hand is founded on a developmental model that believes the behaviors we see on the surface are the result of a complex developmental process we all go through as our brains and bodies grow.  

Differences in the underlying values and principles of each approach.  

ABA values attainment of normal behaviors and compliance with social norms.  ABA principles are rooted in making the child look and behave normally.  The definition of normal is inherently rooted in a value judgment of what is normal and appropriate.  There is a belief that using methods that may cause the child distress are acceptable if the goal is positive behavioral change or shaping.  ABA believes that the behavioral training is rooted in the science of behavioral training and the relationship with the trainer is not as significant as the scientific "analysis" and shaping of behaviors by a trained behavioral analyst.  

DIR values individual differences (neurodiversity) and we value helping every person achieve their fullest potential.  The vision of ICDL is "A world where individual differences are embraced and everyone achieves their fullest potential."  While the outcome of this growth and development process typically includes a stabilizing of behaviors and often times expression of behaviors that are more compliant with social norms, the goal of the treatment is not normalization.  We seek to understand, accept, and appreciate every person for who they are in their own unique way of being.  Our goals for treatment focus on overall improvement in development and quality of life.  Furthermore, we do not believe that promoting development or addressing the challenges of autism needs to be painful (it is often very difficult, but it does not need t o be painful).  We value relationships and we understand that relationships fuel development.  This is why we focus so much attention on coaching parents to strategically promote their child's development through loving and playful interactions.  We want to see stable patterns of behaviors, however we seek to achieve this by developing the core capacities of self-regulation, engagement, communication, and thinking/reasoning.  

Eye Contact Example

An ABA approach to autism often includes training to reinforce the child when the child provides eye contact.  The goal is to increase the frequency of eye contact behavior.  This is a goal because it is a "normal" behavior and there is hope that it will increase meaningful interactions if the child is making eye contact.  

A DIR approach to autism will not directly train the child to provide eye contact.  Instead we work to develop the capacity for engaging, relating, and communicating from the "bottom up."  We work to build this core foundation by developing the child's capacity for social emotional engagement.  When we do this, the majority of children will end up increasing their frequency of eye contact with others.  So, we get to the same goal for most children, but with two key differences.  The first difference is that eye contact is only meaningful if it represents engagement.  Training for eye contact may increase the use of eye contact but not necessarily engagement.  The learned behavior of eye contact without engagement is utterly useless.  So, our goal is more at the core.  We seek meaningful engagement and in most cases the eye contact will naturally follow in a meaningful way.  Secondly, sometimes children (and adults) do not provide eye contact because it can be overwhelming or confusing to their sensory systems.  In these cases, children may be better able to attend, engage, relate, communicate, learn, and complete tasks when they actually avoid eye contact.  We respect this individual difference and we can still increase the capacity for engagement without forcing learned eye contact.  The engagement is the more foundational developmental goal.  

New or Modern ABA

There has been an overall movement in the ABA field to move away from the more aversive punishments and to utilize more play in the ABA process.  This is a good shift and hopefully will reduce some of the potential negative impacts that many autistic adults describe in their past experiences of ABA therapy as a child.  However, fundamentally new or modern ABA is still ABA.  It is still focused on changing and normalizing behaviors through behavior modification.  The play is used as a way to build relationship with the belief that it will help the behavioral techniques be more effective.  While this brings more humanity into the therapeutic process, the actual goals and behavioral techniques to get there have not changed.  

Going back to the eye contact example, some people may claim that new ABA is differnt, but recent research in the ABA filed clearly indicates that behaviorally training fo reye contact continues.  There are more articles written questioning the ethics of training for eye contact, but in the end, the same operant conditioning is being used, just with new packaging.  Here is a summary with references:

Is ABA Still Focusing on Training for Eye Contact?  

ABA and Eye Contact: Recent Evidence Shows It Remains a Targeted Behavior

Despite branding shifts to “modern” or “new” ABA, behavior-analytic interventions continue to explicitly target eye contact / social gaze as a teachable behavior using core ABA procedures (e.g., shaping, prompting, reinforcement, stimulus control). Recent peer-reviewed literature demonstrates this.

Examples of Recent Peer-Reviewed Evidence

Behavior-analytic scoping review on promoting social gaze (2023): Confirms behavioral interventions are effective for social gaze/eye contact and shows it remains a common behavioral target. URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946723000658

Using shaping to teach eye contact to children with autism (2018): Applied shaping and reinforcement to teach preschoolers sustained eye contact with maintenance and generalization. URL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6411557/

App with embedded video modeling to increase eye contact (2023): Mobile app using modeling and reinforcement increased eye contact with familiar and unfamiliar adults. URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10883576221124805

Shaping social eye contact via telehealth (parent-implemented) (2025): Parents, coached remotely, shaped eye contact successfully during naturalistic interaction. URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/395882572_Shaping_Social_Eye_Contact_in_Children_With_Autism_Via_Telehealth_A_Parent-Implemented_Intervention

Parent intervention via video modeling (eye contact and joint attention) (2024): Children with ASD/ID improved eye contact and joint attention using graded prompting and reinforcement strategies. URL: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38391746/

What This Shows About 'New ABA'

1. Same operant technology, updated packaging. Across studies, the operative elements are classic ABA (modeling, prompting, shaping, differential reinforcement), now often delivered via apps, telehealth, or parent-implementation—but the behavioral target is still eye contact.

2. Ongoing ethical discussion, not abandonment of the goal. Contemporary behavior analysts debate whether and when to teach eye contact, underscoring that teaching eye contact remains an active ABA topic rather than an obsolete one.

Bottom Line

Recent literature (2018–2025) documents ABA interventions that directly train eye contact/social gaze using standard operant procedures. Claims that 'new ABA' no longer trains discrete social behaviors like eye contact are not supported by the current research record.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network wrote a while paper centered on ethical practices in autism interventions entitled, For Whose Benefit? Evidence, Ethics, and Effectiveness of Autism Interventions.  On page 18 of the white paper they discuss new ABA.  Here is an excerpt from that section of the paper:

“New ABA” is Still ABA

At ASAN, we have heard from parents who say that ABA as practiced in their family is different from “traditional” ABA – describing interventions that are “holistic,” “play-based,” or “naturalistic,” that focus on communication or life skills rather than on “normalizing” a child’s behaviors, and that take a respectful approach to an autistic child’s existence and needs. This is sometimes termed “new ABA.” It can be hard to determine what is really going on in any given situation. If these practices are indeed ABA, we stress that they are still harmful. We also stress that many practices termed “new ABA” are not, in fact, ABA at all.

Sometimes, parents are describing something that still sounds like ABA, in that the intervention still uses reinforcements to modify . An intervention that, at its core, still uses ABA techniques, is still ABA and still unethical, no matter what other methods it may use. It still carries the same risks of harm, the same lack of acknowledgement of those risks, and the same lack of rigorous supporting evidence. Fundamental modifications of who an autistic person is – or attempts to do so – do not suddenly become acceptable just because the techniques used are less obviously cruel.

A core component of “new ABA” is contrasting its practices with the “old,” torturous practices of Lovaas and his ilk. Leaving aside that Lovaas’s practices are hardly consigned to the past (see the section “The Brutal Beginnings and the Horrific Present”), an intervention being less abusive than a different intervention does not mean that intervention is inherently ethical. Our ethical concerns with ABA go far beyond whether an intervention uses electrical shocks or withholds food to enforce compliance. To again use the metaphor of the rotting hotel, we would still advise others to avoid renting a room there, even if the owners assured us they had repainted and brought the electrical wiring up to code.

ABA that is play-based is still ABA. It is still harmful to try and modify autistic traits or the appearance of autistic behavior, even if it is couched in toys and the appearance of fun. Play-based ABA takes the activities an autistic person enjoys and turns them into ways to attempt to make the person less autistic. For example, if an autistic child collects shoelaces, the ABA therapist might hold a shoelace near the therapist’s eye in order to elicit eye contact. Or, the therapist might do a puzzle with a child, but require the child to look at the therapist and verbally request each piece of the puzzle. While this may seem “nicer” than a traditional discrete trial, the end goal is still to modify the child’s autistic trait. Using play to train a child to appear less autistic also warps the experience of play for the child. We want to stress that we do not believe that all play-based therapy is bad or harmful. We realize that play-based therapies can be incredibly useful, especially for nonspeaking autistic children. But play-based ABA, specifically, is harmful because it is still a form of ABA.

When ABA approaches are used to teach language or speech, we are concerned because the behaviorist approach to language development has been discredited (Chomsky, 1980). ABA approaches to language development, including Verbal Behavior, ignore decades of well-established research on how children, including autistic children and children with significant structural language impairments, learn language (Birner, 2021; Feldman, 2019; Kuhl, 2000). When children appear to gain language in these programs, it is important to understand that this progress is in spite of, not because of, ABA’s outdated and disproven methodology. Autistic children are best supported by a Speech-Language Therapist familiar with best practices for supporting their specific language challenges, including augmentative and alternative communication systems, or AAC.Teaching language via ABA is ineffective and not worth the harm it causes to those subjected to it.

Similarly, there are better ways to teach other core life skills, such as through non-ABA occupational and physical therapies. We once again reference that there are non-autism specific supports that can and do help autistic people build skills and lead more independent and self-directed lives. An autistic person with severe apraxia, for example, could benefit from some of the same occupational and physical therapies, along with the same assistive technology, as apraxic people with other developmental disabilities.. It is also important to remember that just because an autistic person needs a highly individualized or adapted intervention to help them, this does not mean they need ABA. ABA does not have sole claim to individualized or customized therapies and services.

We sometimes hear from parents that their child likes their ABA therapist or assents to an ABA intervention. We would still have concerns in these situations – liking one’s therapist does not make the intervention effective or ethical. Our ethical concerns with ABA (and all other autism therapies and services) do not center around the likeability of the practitioner or whether they can build a rapport with the autistic person. (ASAN, 2021, p 18-19)