Intensive Interaction is designed to meet the learning needs of people who are still at early stages of communication development. At one extreme, this may be a person who is very 'difficult to reach', living a socially isolated life, perhaps having a range of self-stimulatory behaviours and not showing motivation to be with other people. Equally, the approach is for people who may be highly social in many ways and have many successful interaction activities with other people. Yet such a person may still need to develop further knowledge and ability in areas like: use and understanding of eye contacts and facial expressions, taking turns in exchanges of behaviour, developing and furthering vocalisations toward the threshold of speech. Indeed, some of the people for whom the approach would have meaning may be people who have some speech and language ability, but would still benefit from further learning and development in the area of the 'fundamentals of communication'.
Frequently heard terms for the people with whom we are concerned would include: people who have severe and complex learning difficulties, people who have very severe learning difficulties, people who have profound and multiple learning difficulties, people who have multi-sensory impairments, people who have a diagnosis of autism