Fire Safety Skills Training for Individuals with Severe and Profound Mental Retardation

Abstract

The statistics surrounding fire injury and death in the United States are staggering. Literature concerning fire safety has focused largely on children, but persons with mental retardation also are in need of fire safety training as they are highly vulnerable to fire injury and death. The purpose of this research was to evaluate behavioral skills training procedures for teaching individuals with severe and profound mental retardation to exit their residence upon hearing a smoke detector. Fire safety skills training involved giving instructions, modeling, prompting, and corrective feedback. Assessments took place in the participants' group homes with the participants unaware that an assessment was taking place. Following training, it was anticipated that the participants would be able to initiate exiting behaviors within 10 seconds following the activation of a smoke detector and exit the building within 30 seconds of initiating exiting behaviors. The results showed that one participant out of seven met these criteria following training. However, data gathered on the level of prompts needed for participants to exit the building showed that some individuals exited the building with a less intrusive level of prompting from staff.