Association for Behavior Analysis International

Safety skill instruction is critical to the wellbeing of individuals with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities. Learning to respond to dangerous situations can mitigate or eliminate the serious health and safety ramifications (e.g., injury and death) associated with dangerous situations. In this symposium, we will describe behavior analytic interventions focused on safety skills that involve behavioral skills training, error correction procedures, in situ training, use of technology, reinforcement-based procedures, and video prompting procedures. Sureshkumar and colleagues will present a study evaluating the effectiveness of video prompting procedures conducted via telehealth to teach children with intellectual and developmental disabilities to perform first aid on themselves for common childhood injuries under simulated conditions. Morel and colleagues will present a literature review focused exclusively on behavioral strategies for abduction and sexual abuse prevention for individuals with developmental disabilities. Herndon and colleagues will present a study evaluating the effects of behavioral skills training and in situ training using remote technology in teaching victims to identify and respond to bullying and non-bullying behavior. The results will be discussed within the context of implications for clinicians and future research.

Researchers and practitioners who (a) work with individuals with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities and (b) use behavior analytic strategies to teach safety skills to these individuals or their caregivers.

Unintentional injuries are one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality among children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). First aid training involves teaching critical first aid skills, some of which are designed to treat unintentional injuries. To date, no study has (a) evaluated the effects of video prompting procedures to teach first aid skills to children with IDD or (b) attempted to teach these skills to children using a telehealth delivery format. We used a concurrent multiple baseline across skills design to evaluate the effectiveness of video prompting procedures via telehealth to teach five children with IDD to perform first aid on themselves for insect stings, minor cuts, and minor burns under simulated conditions. For all participants, training resulted in large improvements, which maintained for a minimum of 4 weeks. Further, effects of the training generalized to novel confederates for all participants, and these effects maintained for a minimum of 4 weeks. In addition, participants and their caregivers expressed high satisfaction with the video prompting procedures and telehealth experience.

By mitigating injury or death, safety skill instruction is vital to the protection of individuals with developmental disabilities (DD). Despite the importance of learning abduction and sexual abuse prevention skills, these topics remain under researched, especially for individuals with DD. Although past literature reviews on abduction and sexual abuse prevention have included participants with disabilities, no literature review has focused exclusively upon abduction and sexual abuse prevention by individuals with DD. Further, variables like use of technology, error correction procedures, use of reinforcement, and procedural modifications are important to be considered. Therefore, the purpose of this literature review was to conduct a current review of abduction and sexual abuse prevention research by individuals with DD and examine variables omitted in previous reviews. Results indicate that there has been an increase in attention of teaching abduction prevention skills to individuals with DD, but that sexual abuse prevention remains under researched. Limitations of the research include a lack of strategies to actively program for generalization, limited diversity of sex of participants and confederates, lack of maintenance, social validity, assessments of differential responding to non-dangerous situations, and monitoring of participant safety. Results and areas for future research will be discussed.