[F8] KeyDown too fast?

Hi, I'm extremely rusty with flash and trying to get back into it... I'm making a simple game where whenever the user hits left right up or down the direction of the character changes; however, upon testing it has become apparent that the key down is too sensitive so an average hit of the left key will most often turn the character twice. Whats the best way to solve this problem? I presume something with a timer might do the trick but I'm having trouble finding any examples of this...

p.s. I clicked F8 by accident I think but I'm using CS3(AS 3.0); edit: just noticed there is a actionscript 3.0 section, can someone move this there?