The focus of the Early Start Denver Model is on optimizing relationships in the family and teaching new, adaptive skills that allow children greater control, autonomy, competence, and personal satisfaction within their social experiences.   The tools of increasing positive interactions among child and family members, functional analysis, communication training, structured teaching of alternative, more conventional behaviors, redirection, and adding structure and visual cues to the physical environment provide the basis for teaching children with autism new behavioral strategies to achieve their goals.

Families are at the helm of their child's treatment; their styles, values, preferences, goals, and dreams guide their child's treatment plan.  Parents are the primary teachers of all young children; parental teaching for young children with autism is crucial to the child's progress.  However, autism is a complex disorder and parents may need guidance, support, and help in various aspects of designing and carrying out treatment for young children with autism. 

There are two intervention models that have been joined together in the ESDM. Its ties to the Denver Model have already been discussed. The second model, Pivotal Response Training (PRT), is based on the principles of Applied Behavior Analysis. PRT incorporates specific variables associated with motivation within a systematic teaching approach to increase communication, language and play skills under natural conditions that more closely resemble the way typically developing children acquire developmentally appropriate skills (L.K. Koegel, Koegel, Harrower, & Carter, 1999; L.K. Koegel, Koegel, Shoshan, & McNerney, 1999). The motivational variables are delivered in 1:1 interactions consisting of turn taking, incorporating children’s interests and preferences within learning opportunities, varying the task sequencing and interspersing previously mastered tasks with new acquisition tasks, rewarding children’s for attempting new skills as well as performing them successfully, and incorporating natural rewards that are directly and inherently related to the child’s response. Research has shown that incorporating these motivational variables as a group into an intervention approach can lead to collateral improvements in nontargeted behaviors and generalized areas of responding. These areas include decreases in disruptive behaviors (R.L. Koegel, Koegel, & Surratt, 1992), improved child affect (R.L. Koegel, O’Dell, & Dunlap, 1988), improvements in speech intelligibility (R.L. Koegel, Camarata, Koegel, Ben-Tall, & Smith, 1998), improvements in academic learning (Kern, & Dunlap, 1998), decreases in stereotypic and restrictive behavior (Baker, 2000; Baker, Koegel, & Koegel, 1998), and improvements in social areas (L.K. Koegel, Camarata, Valdez-Menchaca, & Koegel, 1998; L.K. Koegel, et al., 1999; Schreibman, Stahmer, & Pierce, 1996). 

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