Teaching adults with severe and profound retardation to exit their homes upon hearing the fire alarm.
Prompting, modeling, and differential reinforcement with client-chosen rewards were used to teach 3 nonverbal people with severe to profound mental retardation to exit their group homes at the sound of the house fire alarm, using a multiple baseline design. All 3 participants learned to exit independently in less than 2 min in all experimenter-initiated surprise fire drills and in the majority of staff-initiated surprise fire drills. Each participant was also able to exit from five areas of the house from which teaching was not done.
Bannerman
D J
DJ
Department of Human Development and Family Life, University of Kansas, Lawrence 66045.
Sheldon
J B
JB
Sherman
J A
JA
D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D001521:Behavior Therapy; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D006224:Cricetinae; D005390:Fires; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D008297:Male; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D012449:Safety; D013663:Teaching