Using Constant Time Delay to Teach Discrete Skills to Individuals with Significant Disabilities

Amy Clausen and Olivia Fulton, under the advisement of Dr. Sarah Hawkins-Lear from the department of Special Education, conducted a research study to examine the effects of Constant Time Delay when teaching discrete target skills to students with significant disabilities. Constant Time Delay is an errorless teaching strategy that is widely used in the field of Special Education. Within the research study, there were two subjects (Subjects A and B) that participated. Subject A was a sixth grade male with Autism learning to identify health service professionals, and Subject B was a first grade male with intellectual disabilities learning basic sight words. Baseline, intervention, maintenance, and generalization date were collected throughout the research study. The results indicated that when Constant Time Delay is implemented to teach target skills, students make progress above baseline data and can maintain and generalize the skills at high rates. This study concludes that when systematic instruction is implemented to teach target skills, students achieve and maintain the skills with high accuracy and then generalize across people, environments, and materials