In the mid-1970s Peter Dowrick observed something remarkable at New Zealand’s Auckland Hospital: Children with behavioral and emotional disorders positively changed their behavior by watching an edited videotape of themselves “being successful.”
The practice is called video self-modeling.
Dowrick continues his research and application of video self-modeling in Hawaii, where he is a professor of disability studies and professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
“Video is fascinating because it enables us to do things that otherwise wouldn’t be possible,” Dowrick explained in a recent phone conversation. “Editing allows us to create successful images of ourselves in lots of different ways.”
It is important to note that the person participating in video self-modeling knows that the edited video shows him succeeding in the behavior or skill he is trying to master.
For example, in the mid-1980s, at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, Dowrick helped young adults with developmental disabilities improve independent-living skills. One program taught personal safety.
Because some of the women in the program had been molested, robbed or mistreated in some way, Dowrick developed a safety-training program using an expert experienced in working with people with developmental disabilities.
Previous programs simply taught participants to fear or be suspicious of strangers.
“They did not have the ability to discriminate between people who are genuinely friendly and those who could put them at risk,” Dowrick said.
So he and his colleagues devised a straightforward approach using video self-modeling to teach them how to assess and identify potentially dangerous situations.
“As far as we could tell, it worked wonderfully and quickly. In fact, the young people involved learned to make good discriminations. They could make friendly conversation with strangers. But at the point when they felt they were at risk, they could make good judgments, like not giving out their phone number or sitting too close to someone who was getting physically close and being able to escalate their response if the person got rough–to be able to call for help.”
After assessing each participant to learn the kinds of situations that put him or her at risk, each adult was taught the next level of skills to stay safe.
“We did that by having someone role-play a stranger, someone who posed a threat. We then coached [the adults] through some appropriate and successful responses to situations. We videotaped that. We then edited the tape down to a two- or three-minute encounter that showed the challenging circumstance and the effective response.
“Six months later, one woman was at a shopping mall. A man started following her around the mall and asking for money. [She] excused herself and went somewhere else. But he persisted and kept pestering her no matter what she did. Eventually she went to a store manager and reported him. He went away as soon as security became involved.
“She went home to her group home living situation. At the home, there were older adults who were responsible for keeping an eye on things. When she told them what happened at the mall, they were amazed because she was a very shy young woman, easily intimidated and fairly dependent on others. No one expected her to stick up for herself like that. They said, ‘How did you know what to do?’ She said, ‘It’s on my safety tapes.’ “
Dowrick looked back on those tapes but found no situations exactly like the one this woman experienced. But the other role-playing situations had taught her to assert herself.
“She had generalized from those situations and learned personal safety skills,” Dowrick said. “This is a special category of learning because the student learns things you hope they’ll never have to use, skills you hope they’ll never need and will not have the opportunity to practice.”
At the Center for Human Development at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, coordinators of the Video Futures Project, Marilyn Conner and Carl Evertsbusch, use video self-modeling to help children and adults in their community.
Evertsbusch recalled a young woman with autism who, for some reason, had difficulty entering her classroom. She would stop in the doorway and couldn’t move.
“This happened regularly,” Evertsbusch remembered, “and it began impacting her education. So in the summer, when the class was empty, we videotaped her coming down the hallway and entering the empty classroom. During the school year, we videotaped a full classroom and edited the video to show her walking in like there was no problem.”
She then was able to walk into a full classroom of students without stopping in the doorway.
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For information on the process, contact the University of Alaska-Anchorage at www.alaskachd.org/video/video4.html or Peter Dowrick at dowrick@hawaii.edu.
