Field Report: Making Toilet Training Easier—a Novel Enuresis Alarm System

Abstract

Presents a field report on toilet training. More than 40 years after Azrin and Foxx (1971) developed an effective protocol for teaching individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities to use a toilet, little is known about how to help non-specialists implement this protocol efficiently in community settings. Dan Mruzek, a psychologist and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, hypothesized that toilet training could become more accessible if it incorporated an easy-to-use manual and an unobtrusive enuresis alarm. An enuresis alarm consists of a sensor that is placed in an individual’s underwear and connected with wires to a pager-size device that the student wears on his or her clothing. When the sensor becomes wet, the device emits a sound or light, alerting the individual and his or her interventionists that the individual needs to go to the toilet. As such, it can facilitate toilet training by helping the individual associate the onset of urination with going to the toilet, while also reducing the need for interventionists to monitor the individual continually and schedule trips to the toilet every few minutes. Overall, the formulation of the alarm system and intervention has been a multi-year, iterative process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)