Abstract
Over 3,000 children under 10 years old died in 2017 as a result of unintentional injuries (e.g. suffocation, drowning, firearm discharge, burns, and accidental poisonings). Some of these deaths likely occurred when children came across a dangerous item while unsupervised. In the current study two typically developing 4-year-olds were taught to engage in a safety response in the presence of a variety of dangerous stimuli. Behavioral skills training plus in-situ training was used to teach a three-step response in the presence of one dangerous stimulus. Following mastery of this response, equivalence-based instruction was used to create classes of dangerous (i.e., medicine bottle, a lighter, and a handgun) and nondangerous (i.e., container, a flash drive, and a hair dryer) stimuli. Results demonstrated that the addition of equivalence-based instruction to behavioral skills training plus in-situ training was effective at training a safety response across multiple dangerous stimuli.
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Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in figshare at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.9869705.v1
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A Caldwell University Faculty Development Grant awarded to the second author provided partial support for this research. All other authors declare they have no conflicts of interest.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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This project was completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Behavior Analysis by the first author, under the supervision of the second author. The authors would like to thank Casey Dipsey, Talia Crabb- Kahlow, and Daniel Ferman for their assistance on various aspects of this project. The first author won the 2018 Berkshire Association for Behavior Analysis and Therapy Student Paper Award for this project.
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Giannakakos, A.R., Vladescu, J.C., Reeve, K.F. et al. Using Behavioral Skills Training and Equivalence-Based Instruction to Teach Children Safe Responding to Dangerous Stimuli: A Proof of Concept. Psychol Rec 71, 119–131 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-020-00380-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-020-00380-8