Abstract
Objectives
This paper provides an overview of the literature on assessing and teaching safety skills to children and adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities across different safety skills and discusses recommendations for practice in teaching safety skills.
Methods
We reviewed studies evaluating safety skills training with individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities. We evaluated procedures for teaching safety skills for social threats (abduction and sexual abuse lures) and physical threats (guns and poisons). We conclude with recommendations for practice based on this research.
Results
Active learning approaches consisting of behavioral skills training with added intervention components such as in situ training, prompting, and stimulus control strategies are the most effective interventions for teaching and promoting the generalization of safety skills for social and physical safety threats. In addition, limited research shows video modeling was effective for social threats but not for safety threats.
Conclusions
Children and adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities are at a higher risk of being injured or victimized than their typically developing peers. Teaching individuals with disabilities how to respond when safety threats are present can decrease the likelihood that they will be injured or victimized. This paper summarizes literature showing active learning approaches are most effective and provides recommendations for practitioners to conduct safety skills training.
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Miltenberger, R., Novotny, M. Teaching Safety Skills to Individuals with Developmental Disabilities. Adv Neurodev Disord 6, 270–279 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41252-022-00248-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41252-022-00248-8