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A method of documenting the time between when a direction is given and when the student complies.
When to Use It
When to Use It
When the behavior has a clear beginning and end
When you want to know the average amount of time it takes a student to respond in a specific manner, after a signal or prompt
To measure response efficiency
Latency and Duration both measure time
It provides a measure of the student's delay in engaging in behavior
Latency: measures how long it takes to start the behavior
Duration: is how long the behavior lasts.
Latency is a helpful measure if the goal is to reduce the amount of time it takes for a student to start an appropriate behavior or increase the amount of time between an environmental trigger and the occurrence of inappropriate behavior.
Must note when the prompt, request, stimulus is given and the time student starts the behavior
Materials Needed:
A watch or clock to easily reference time
Data collection form (see below for templates)
How to Collect the Data
How to Collect the Data
Define the prompt and the student behavior to be observed
When the prompt occurs, start the timer
When student engages in the defined behavior, stop the timer
Document the length of time
Repeat every time the prompt is provided
Summarizing the Data:
Summarizing the Data:
This data is summarized by calculating the average latency (average time it takes for the behavior to start).
To calculate, sum all of the latencies and divide by the total number of opportunities.
Example: Shelly’s teacher assigned work 4 times during the observation. Shelly took 60 seconds, 90 seconds, 35 seconds, and 50 seconds to start the four assignments.
So, 60 + 90 + 35 + 50 = 235 ÷ 4 = Shelly took an average of 58.75 seconds to start her assignments during the observation.
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