PH - Progressive Time Delay

The next help strategy is progressive time delay. A progressive time delay increases the amount of time between the natural cue to perform a task and when you would provide help. The time is increased over a number of trials. (A trial is an occasion when the child performs the task.) A progressive time delay begins with an instructional period that has a zero-second delay. The natural cue to perform a task is presented and then you immediately provide help for your child. The natural reward follows her completion of the task. Because there is no delay between the natural cue and the help you provide, your child cannot respond incorrectly. This provides your child with errorless learning opportunities. After the instructional phase, you would introduce a delay between the natural cue and when you provide help. The natural cue to perform the task is presented and then you wait before providing help. This gives your child a chance to respond independently. If she responds correctly before the end of the delay, you would provide or allow the positive natural reward to follow. If your child doesn't respond by the end of the delay, then you would help her to correctly complete the task and follow it with the positive natural reward. Over time, the length of the delay is increased until your child can respond to the natural cue without help. The delay is usually increased in segments from one to five seconds, but if your child has severe motor or cognitive delays longer delays might be necessary.

Can you describe the progressive time delay help strategy and how it was used in the examples?

If you would like to increase your understanding of Progressive Time Delay help strategies, you can review the following suggested activities.

If your child has an IFSP or an IEP, try to write a plan for how you might use the progressive time delay help strategy to help her develop one of the skills listed on the IFSP or IEP. You might ask your child's teacher to help you review your plan.

Think about how, over time, a progressive time delay help strategy could be used with the following children.

Benito's objective: To say his name when he sees it in print. Children in Benito's classroom need to recognize their name to find the right cubbies in which to keep personal belongings. Rather than just teach Benito to associate a label with the position of his cubby, the team decides to teach him to read his name in print. In this way, he will also learn about reading and learn to find other things such as his art papers when his name is printed on them.
Marcus' objective: Use a spoon to eat. Marcus routinely grabs food with his hand, even food such as applesauce.

Now you have read about and seen examples of different ways of providing help, you can stop here or you can learn about INCIDENTAL TEACHING

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