Marie Cisse

#4

Constant Time Delay Strategy

Description:
Constant time delay (CTD) is a strategy that is based on using prompts during instructional
activities in order to help students with disabilities to improve learning techniques. Even though
constant time delay is one of the easiest strategy to implement, it has one disadvantage to have a
slower instruction rate (Browder & Shear, 1996).

Information on Population:
Constant time delay focuses on students in all grade levels.
This strategy is used with students with mild/severe learning and intellectual disabilities.
It also involves students with vision impairments. It is also used with students that are
English Language Learners (ELL), high incidence disabilities such as Autism, and
students in general education.
Constant time delay help students improve their reading, math, and learning skills.
The strategy improve student learning abilities because of the attention that it provided.
This strategy focuses on not making mistakes and allowing near error-free learning
(Stevens & Schuster, 1988).

Written Procedures for Implementation:

Constant time delay is a strategy that focuses on helping students with mild learning and
intellectual disabilities with activities in classrooms and even at home.
This strategy can be implemented by teachers or parents at home.
Since this strategy focuses on helping students develop an error-free learning, the teacher
or parents ask a question then tell or show the student the answer when he/she is not sure
of the answer.
Constant time delay is implemented in classroom by teachers using prompts as simple as
reading cards.
Students are encouraged by the teacher to wait a few seconds after a question is asked if
they did not know the answer.
The teacher then helps them by telling/showing them the answer before asking the same
question again. The students then try again to answer to the question.
Students try to answer or perform the skills based on what they have learned during
previous uses of constant time delay when imitating the teachers model. (Fulk &
Stormont-Sturgin, 1995).
This strategy is highly effective because it is a direct instruction procedure. CTD can be
used one on one or with the entire classroom.

 CTD procedures are composed of three components: the stimulus, the response, and the
feedback (Knight, Ross, & Taylor, 2003).

References:
Knight, M. G., Ross, D. E., & Taylor, R. L. (2003). Constant time delay and interspersal
of known items to teach sight words to students with mental retardation and learning
disabilities. Education & Training In Developmental Disabilities, 38(2), 179-191.
Seward, J., Schuster, J., Ault, M., Collins, B., & Hall, M. (2014). Comparing
simultaneous prompting and constant time delay to teach leisure skills to students with
moderate intellectual disability. Education & Training In Autism & Developmental
Disabilities, 49(3), 381-395.
Hooper, J., Ivy, S., & Hatton, D. (2014). Using constant time delay to teach braille word
recognition. Journal Of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 108(2), 107-121.