A primary preventive approach to the acquisition and maintenance of fire emergency responding: Comparison of external and self-instruction strategies

Abstract

The comparative effectiveness of external and self-instruction procedures in training children to perform emergency fire responses and establishing maintenance of correct responding was examined. Forty-seven children were divided into three groups—external instruction (n=15), self-instruction (n=16), and control (n=16). All three groups were tested prior to and immediately following training. Children in the two training groups received additional testing in the form of postcheck assessments at two and four weeks and two, three, four, and eight months following training. Generalization to an untrained situation and transfer of training to both a second in-school setting and children's homes were also tested. The results indicated that both training methods resulted in high levels of acquisition, a slight decline in maintenance of responding over the first four months of postcheck assessment, and a substantial drop in maintenance of responding from the four- to the eight-month postcheck. An interaction between type of instruction (external versus self-instruction) and assessment period (the first four months versus the second four months of postcheck assessment) was apparent upon closer examination. External instruction subjects' scores during the second time period not only declined more than both groups' scores had declined during the first time period but also declined more than self-instruction subjects' scores did during the same (the second) time period. Generalization probe data evidenced a high degree of generalization to an untrained response. There was a high degree of transfer to the second in-school setting and moderate generalization to the home setting. Factors that may contribute to response maintenance are considered.

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