In a classroom setting, five children (aged 5 or 10 years) classified as severely emotionally disturbed and mildly mentally retarded received sight word instruction that included time delay to transfer stimulus control from a verbal prompt to the printed word. Four students mastered the words without direct instruction. (TJH)

Five moderately mentally retarded peer tutors (ages 9-11) were taught sight words using a time delay procedure, and then were taught to use this procedure to teach the words to six younger, moderately mentally retarded children (ages 6-9). Younger children learned all five sight words in one to four sessions. (Author/JW)

A review of 48 studies on the use of sight-word methodology to teach functional reading to individuals with moderate and severe disabilities found that sight-word instruction has been highly effective with this population. New strategies have included feedback procedures and applying constant time delay. A persistent limitation of the research is…

Three employees with moderate mental retardation who were nonreaders were taught to use sight words to self-initiate job tasks in competitive employment settings. Training resulted in the ability to read job-specific sight words, to use verbalized self-instruction, to use a self-monitoring checklist, to self-initiate work tasks, and increased…

This review of 20 years of literature on sight word instruction for individuals with handicaps examines effectiveness data for procedures teaching word recognition and comprehension. Covered are "errorless procedures," prompt elimination, stimulus fading, time delay, easy to hard discrimination, and trial and error with feedback. Two tables…