| The purpose of this study was to teach three women with developmental disabilities to respond assertively to inappropriate sexual solicitations and to examine generalization of responding. Two interventions were used: a video-review procedure and a video-review procedure with behavioral rehearsal. The interventions were introduced in a multiple-baseline experimental design across response scenarios: (1) verbal requests for the participant to take off her clothes or requests for permission for the male staff to take off his clothes, (2) verbal requests to look at or be in inappropriate movies or pictures, and (3) verbal requests to engage in subtle inappropriate physical interaction (i.e., giving back rub, sitting on lap). Responding was assessed using role-play and naturalistic probes. During the naturalistic probes, a confederate male staff member presented the inappropriate requests to the participants. During baseline, all participants demonstrated few assertive responses in all three response scenarios. For one participant, after the video-review was implemented, there was a systematic increase in the number of steps completed for an assertive response for all three response scenarios, in role-play probes. For the other two participants, responding systematically increased following the implementation of the video-review procedure with behavioral rehearsal, in role-play probes. Naturalistic probe data demonstrate that all three participants learned to say, "no" and refrain from engaging in the inappropriate request from the confederate male staff member. |
