UCLA Young Autism Project

The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Young Autism Project (YAP), led by O. Ivar Lovaas, developed a widely disseminated intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The intervention consists of up to 40 hours per week of intensive one-to-one instruction, based on principles of applied behavior analysis (ABA), over 2 to 3 years, ideally beginning when children are under the age of 3.5 years. This entry discusses the origins of the UCLA YAP, the intervention model developed through the project, research on the model, and the model’s dissemination around the world.

The UCLA YAP was founded in 1970 in an effort to improve on outcomes achieved in prior studies by Lovaas and others on ABA interventions for children with ASD. In the 1960s, ...