The Effectiveness of a Constant Time‐delay Procedure to Teach Chained Responses to Adolescents With Mental Retardation

Abstract

The effectiveness of a 5-s constant time-delay procedure to teach three chained food preparation behaviors to four moderately retarded adolescent students was evaluated within a multiple probe design across behaviors. Results indicate that the procedure was effective in teaching all four students to make a sandwich, boil a boil-in-bag item, and bake canned biscuits. The skills maintained with at least 85% accuracy over a 3-month period. Training generalized from the school to the home setting for the 2 subjects that completed generalization probe sessions. The percentage of errors across all skills and students was less than 9%.

Teaching Safety Skills to High School Students With Moderate Disabilities

“…A 4th student received instruction on one task only. In using time delay procedures to teach task-analyzed chained responses, we replicated previous research (McDonnell, 1987;McDonnell & Ferguson, 1989;Miller & Test, 1989;Schoen & Sivil, 1989;Schuster, Gast, Wolery, & Guiltinan, 1988;Wolery, Ault, Gast, Doyle, & Griffen, 1990, 1991. However, the use of time delay to teach activities in which the risk of injury was present has not been documented.…”

“…At 1 month, the data were mixed. Walt performed at We replicated the work of other investigators in using constant time delay to teach chained tasks to students with moderate and severe disabilities (McDonnell, 1987;Miller & Test, 1989;Schuster et al, 1988;Wolery et al, 1990Wolery et al, , 1991 For Julie, the sink task was an apparently complex and difficult task. In cases such as these, the use of progressive time delay can be recommended (Snell & Gast, 1981).…”

“…In retrospect, it may have been beneficial to have extended training for several additional sessions to ensure fluent posttraining performance. A performance criterion identical to the one used in this study was used by Schuster et al (1988). These authors reported good performance over a 3-month posttraining period.…”

“…Miller & Test, 1989;Schuster et al, 1988;Wolery et al, 1990). The number of sequence errors at the 1-month follow-up probe sessions raises concerns that had the students been evaluated with a more functional criterion (i.e., was the student injured during the task, and was the broken material removed from the setting?…”

Teaching Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders to Mand for the Removal of Stimuli That Prevent Access to Preferred Items

“…In the EO-present condition, teaching was conducted using a constant time delay (CTD; Schuster, Gast, Wolery, & Guiltinan, 1988) procedure starting with a 0-s delay. Following the indicating response, the therapist obstructed the preferred activity and immediately provided the controlling prompt for the mand for removal.…”