Social validation and training of emergency fire safety skills for potential injury prevention and life saving.
Brief BST with a mock bedroom teaches young children fire-escape skills that last.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with five typical kids in a classroom.
They built a fake bedroom in the school gym.
A trainer used BST: explain, show, practice, and praise.
Kids rehearsed nine fire-escape steps until they got them right.
Two weeks later the trainer checked if they still could do it.
What they found
Every child hit mastery on all nine steps during the fake fire.
Scores stayed high at the two-week follow-up.
Parents and firefighters said the skills looked real and useful.
How this fits with other research
McGonigle et al. (2014) did the same thing with teens but used real hallways instead of a fake room.
Both studies got big, lasting gains, so the method works across ages and places.
Weil (1984) swapped fire for general home safety and still beat a talk-only class.
Chovet Santa Cruz et al. (2024) moved BST online and taught kids to leave a game when strangers talk.
Same engine, new road: brief BST keeps kids safe in person, at home, or on a tablet.
Why it matters
You do not need a fire truck or a big budget.
A corner of the classroom, a smoke alarm sound, and ten minutes of BST can give kids life-saving habits that stick.
Try it next week: set up one mock bedroom, run the nine-step drill, and send a note home so parents can rehearse at bedtime.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A multifaceted behavioral program designed to teach emergency fire escape procedures to children was evaluated in a multiple-baseline design. Five children were trained to respond correctly to nine home emergency fire situations under simulated conditions. The situations and responses focused upon in training were identified by a social validation procedure involving consultation with several safety agencies, including the direct input of firefighters. Training, carried out in simulated bedrooms at school, resulted in significant improvements in both overt behavior and self-report of fire safety skills. The gains were maintained at a post-check assessment 2 weeks after training had been terminated. The results are discussed in relation both to the importance of social validation of targets and outcomes and the implications for further research in assessing and developing emergency response skills.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1981 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1981.14-249