Time delay is a practice that focuses on fading the use of prompts during instructional activities. This practice is always used in conjunction with prompting procedures such as leastto-most prompting, simultaneous prompting, and graduated guidance. With this procedure, a brief delay is provided between the initial instruction and any additional instructions or prompts. The evidence-based research focuses on two types of time delay procedures: progressive and constant. With progressive time delay, teachers and other practitioners gradually increase the waiting time between an instruction and any prompts that might be used to elicit a response from a learner with ASD. For example, a teacher provides a prompt immediately after an instruction when a learner with ASD is initially learning a skill. As the learner becomes more proficient at using the skill, the teacher gradually increases the waiting time between the instruction and the prompt. Similar to progressive time delay, with constant time delay, there is no delay between the instruction and prompt when a learner is first learning a skill. However, with constant time delay, a fixed amount of time is always used between the instruction and the prompt as the learner becomes more proficient at using the new skill.
Goals:
• Define time delay
• Identify skills to be taught using time delay
• Identify the steps for implementing time delay
• Locate resources