Training preschool children to identify emergency situations and make emergency phone calls

Abstract

Preschool children (4- and 5-year-olds) were taught to (a) discriminate emergencies from nonemergencies, (b) provide reasons for designating an emergency or nonemergency as such, (c) dial 911, the emergency phone number, and (d) provide information pertaining to an emergency (name, address, phone number, type of emergency, number of people appearing injured, whether an ambulance is needed). The children were divided into groups, and each group participated in a single 30-min training session that consisted of videotaped scenes of emergencies and nonemergencies, an adult trainer modeling correct responses, and feedback from the trainer for the children's responses. In a multiple baseline design, that training was associated with improvements in discriminating emergencies from nonemergencies, providing reasons for designating a scene as an emergency or nonemergency, reporting the number of people appearing injured in an emergency, deciding whether an ambulance was needed, and reporting home phone numbers and addresses. These behaviors generalized to four scenes that were not trained and were maintained at a 3-month follow-up.