Teaching water safety skills to children with autism spectrum disorder
A short BST package can teach autistic children to float and reach safety in the pool, and the skills last at least a month.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three boys with autism, practiced water-safety moves at a community pool.
The team used a five-step package: tell, show, guide, praise right moves, and correct wrong ones.
Each boy got one-on-one lessons until he could float, roll to back, and reach the wall alone.
What they found
All three boys hit the safety goal in 6-9 short sessions.
One week and one month later they still floated and swam to the wall without help.
Parents said the kids now asked for pool time and cried less near water.
How this fits with other research
Levesque-Wolfe et al. (2021) taught autistic kids to refuse stranger lures with the same tell-show-praise recipe.
Both studies prove BST works for very different dangers: abduction and drowning.
Quiroz et al. (2023) used BST plus quick real-life probes so kids with food allergies could scan labels.
Their add-on, called in-situ training, might make water skills even stronger—something to test next.
Why it matters
Drowning is the top killer of children with autism. This paper gives you a ready-made lesson plan you can run at any pool. Bring goggles, a kickboard, and your BST cheat-sheet. Start with short 10-minute turns, praise every small success, and track floats-to-wall as your mastery cue. One month later, check again—skills stuck in this study, so they might stick for your learner too.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
AbstractPublic health data suggest that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at a disproportionate risk of water‐related accidents, including drowning. The current study evaluated the effectiveness of a behavioral intervention package consisting of verbal instructions, modeling, physical guidance, feedback, and differential reinforcement to teach three distinct in‐water safety skills to three boys with ASD. The targeted skills were (a) moving toward a fixed point of safety, (b) rolling from front to back, and (c) floating on back and yelling for help. Results showed that all three participants acquired the skills. For two participants, one or two of the skills had to be broken down into subcomponents for acquisition to occur. Two participants required additional intervention components to manage mild challenging behavior in the pool. Maintenance probes revealed that the skills maintained 1 week and 1 month after teaching. The findings are discussed in the context of a broader approach to accident prevention.
Behavioral Interventions, 2021 · doi:10.1002/bin.1791