RDI Therapy

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I know Dr.Sheely (Dr.Gutsteins wife,creater of RDI) is happy to answer questions, just call her office. Also she offers a free webinar every Tuesday,one at six in the morning CST and one at 2PM where you can ask anything. (you can access it through the website at RDI connect.
Source: I'm there daughter
My mom is really nice and caring, and easy to talk to, she will answer any question, related to RDI or not.

I disagree. From what I've seen, it seems like the exact opposite of ABA. It seems like ABA is all about training the kid to respond to your cues with a trained response. In contrast, RDI is about training you to respond to your kid's cues, so they can learn that their behavior can bring a change in another person's behavior. Which really mirrors how typical kids learn to interact, a lot better than ABA does.

I do think it's better than ABA, though there has not been much research comparing the two. But the RDI approach seems essentially the same as the concept of 'parental sensitivity' (how well a parent responds to their child's cues), which has been studied a lot. A lot of intervention studies have found that among typical kids, improving parental sensitivity boosts their emotional development. For kids with communication disabilities, parental sensitivity also seems to enhance language skills. (This has been found for both deaf and autistic kids.)

We will have to agree to disagree. This is not to say that I haven't seen ABA done the way you describe, and I do disagree with that style of ABA - I think there are therapists who do ABA with far less of the operant conditioning that you describe, and who start their program with a thorough FBA for developing a basis for communication that goes two ways.

I guess, also - if RDI works so well, why is it behind a paywall when all the other therapies are readily available for therapists to use? Why is it that the only research on it has been done by Steven Gutstein, its developer - see: http://www.asatonline.org/resources/articles/rdi

I don't think there's any harm in it, but after spending $3k for just a few month's worth and having very little success - and then getting nearly immediate success when we tried more traditional therapies, I'm not convinced it is worth trying unless you have that kind of money and time to gamble with.