The role of response delay in improving in the discrimination performance or autistic children.

Three autistic children learned to pick the right picture when shown two side by side.

The teacher waited three seconds after showing the pictures before letting the kids point.

They tested if this tiny pause helped the kids choose correctly more often.

All three kids jumped from about a large share correct to over a large share correct when the pause was added.

When the pause was taken away, their scores dropped back down.

Put the pause back and scores rose again — clear cause and effect.

Leezenbaum et al. (2019) seems to say the opposite: preschoolers with autism struggle with any delay.

The trick is age and task. The 1982 kids were older and the delay helped them think. The 2019 preschoolers were too young and the delay hurt their waiting game.

Cullinan et al. (2001) takes the same idea to kids with ADHD. They slowly stretched the wait from seconds to 24 hours to teach self-control.

Buskist et al. (1988) used a five-second pause to teach cooking steps to teens with ID. Same family of tactics, same strong results.

If you teach matching, sorting, or any two-choice task to autistic learners, try a three-second pause after you show the items. Count "one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi" before letting the learner respond. This tiny wait gives their brain time to scan both pictures and pick the right one.