Effectiveness of literacy-based behavioral interventions in acquisition and fluency of safety skills to student with intellectual disabilities

This study consisted of two phases and had two aims. The first was to determine whether literacy-based behavioral interventions were effective in teaching earthquake safety skills such as drop, cover, hold technique and safe evacuation of the building to individuals with intellectual disabilities. The second was to determine whether literacy-based behavioral interventions were effective in the fluency of the drop, cover, hold technique and skill of safely evacuating the building. A multiple probe design across participants was implemented to determine the effects of literacy-based behavioral interventions on skill acquisition, maintenance and generalization in first phase of the study. During the intervention, information on earthquake safety was presented and the information level performances of the participants were determined with the pretest-posttest sessions. A changing criterion design was implemented and replicated across participants to determine the effects of literacy-based behavioral interventions on skill fluency and in the second phase of the study. Fluency in phase 2 was conducted in the context of reducing the duration of the target skill. Three female students aged 14 and with moderate intellectual disability participated in the study and the study was carried out in the school of the participants. The findings of the study have implications that literacy-based behavioral interventions are effective in skill acquisition, maintenance and generalization and increasing the knowledge level of the participants. In addition, literacy-based behavioral interventions were found to be effective in participants' fluency in learning the target skill and making progress in an average of 42.8 seconds. According to the social comparison data, it was determined that the participants performed lower than the norm group before the intervention, but they performed similarly and better than the norm group after the intervention. The subjective measurement findings of the study showed that the parents of the participants considered the target skill as a part of life and a skill that everyone should learn, and found the independent variable appropriate and useful.