Teaching preschool children to report suspicious packages to adults
Fifteen minutes of BST teaches preschoolers to spot and report suspicious packages.
01Research in Context
What this study did
May et al. ran three small tests with the preschoolers.
Each child got 15 minutes of behavioral skills training.
They practiced spotting odd packages and telling a grown-up.
The team used role-play, praise, and quick corrections.
What they found
Every child learned the safety steps in one or two tries.
They spotted new packages they had never seen and still told an adult.
Skills stayed strong when checked weeks later.
How this fits with other research
Chovet Santa Cruz et al. (2024) showed the same BST steps work on Zoom for online-gaming safety.
Rutter et al. (1987) got kids buckled into car seats with the same brief package.
Byra et al. (2018) used the same mix of modeling, practice, and feedback to teach bathroom hygiene to preschoolers with autism.
All four studies show BST works fast for young kids, no matter the skill or setting.
Why it matters
You can teach life-saving safety in under 20 minutes.
Use a toy package, a short script, and quick praise.
Check again next week to be sure it sticks.
This tiny dose can fit into any preschool day.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Law enforcement agencies stress that public reporting of terror-related crime is the predominant means for disrupting these actions. However, schools may be unprepared because the majority of the populace may not understand the threat of suspicious materials or what to do when they are found on school grounds. The purpose of this study was to systematically teach preschool children to identify and report suspicious packages across three experiments. In the first experiment, we used multiple exemplar training to teach children to identify the characteristics of safe and unsafe packages. In the second experiment, we taught participants to identify the locations where packages should be considered unsafe. Finally, in the third experiment, we used behavioral skills training to teach participants to avoid touching unsafe packages, leave the area where they were located, and report their discovery to an adult. Results suggest the participants quickly developed these skills. Implications for safety skills in young school children are discussed.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2018 · doi:10.1002/jaba.478