Teaching abuse-protection skills to people with intellectual, disabilities: A review of the literature

Lumley and Miltenberger (1997) noted the paucity of empirical investigations involving teaching sexual-abuse-protection skills to people with intellectual disabilities. We reviewed relevant empirical investigations since 1997. Six studies trained sexual-abuse-protection skills, and two also included protection skills related to physical and verbal abuse. Each study involved participants with mild or moderate intellectual disabilities, and four noted their participants’ relatively efficient communication skills. No study included male participants, and only one included participants younger than 21. Three studies involved in-situ training, and, while each study arranged a follow-up, skill-maintenance test, only two assessed skill generalization. Discussed are the implications of these findings, the interplay between behavioral and cognitive approaches to this research, and future research directions.