Get Running Head: Creating Stimulus Control

Stimulus control is established through discrimination training, and many everyday interactions with the environment require discriminations. Discrimination is conceptualized as a fundamental behavioral process and is of critical importance to behavior analysts (Skinner, 1969).

A discriminative stimulus (SD, also referred to as S+) is associated with the availability of reinforcement for a response in its presence but not in its absence, whereas an S-delta (S∆, also referred to as S−) is associated with the unavailability of reinforcement for a response in its presence (Skinner, 1938).

There are three types of generalized behavior change: stimulus generalization, response generalization and response maintenance (or generalization over time). Generalization can happen across settings, across people, across stimuli, and even across behaviors.

In behavioral psychology (or applied behavior analysis), stimulus control is a phenomenon in operant conditioning (also called contingency management) that occurs when an organism behaves in one way in the presence of a given stimulus and another way in its absence.

A child that says dog” in the presence of a chihuahua but does not say “dog” when in the presence of a Maine Coon cat is demonstrating stimulus control.

A teacher makes a request of a student. The student emits aggressive behavior immediately following the request. The teacher removes the request in order to avoid getting hit.

In everyday life, habits are usually performed in the presence of specific cues or circumstances; that is, they are under stimulus control. For example, one might overeat popcorn when the lights go down at the movie theater or light a cigarette when one starts driving a car.

Prompt fading. Prompt delay. Stimulus fading.