A comparison of time delay and decreasing prompt hierarchy strategies in teaching banking skills to students with moderate handicaps.

The team compared two ways to teach banking skills to students with moderate intellectual disability. One group got decreasing prompt hierarchy. The other group got time delay. They used an alternating treatments design so each student tried both methods.

Skills included writing checks, filling deposit slips, and using an ATM. Sessions happened in a classroom mock bank.

Both methods worked. Students learned the banking tasks and kept the skills later. Decreasing prompt hierarchy reached mastery faster. Less time, fewer trials, same result.

Bottjer et al. (1979) first showed time delay works with kids who have ID. They taught meal requests. The new study adds banking skills and pits time delay against another prompt style.

Timberlake et al. (1987) also found a data-driven prompt sequence beat other prompts for daily living skills. The 1989 study echoes that result: planned prompt fading wins on speed.

McQuaid et al. (2024) later reviewed constant versus progressive time delay with children with autism. They saw more errors and slower learning with constant delay. The 1989 result aligns: time delay works, but it may not be the fastest route.

If you teach life skills at school, choose decreasing prompt hierarchy when the goal is independence in fewer trials. You still get maintenance, and you free up session time for new targets. Try it next week during community skills block.