Stimulus control: History, method, and application

Stimulus control is an integral part of normal as well as abnormal, daily activities. Understanding stimulus control is therefore essential for successful experimental and applied behavior analyses. The presentation will cover the historical beginnings of stimulus control in Skinner’s and Pavlov’s early writings and analyze basic conceptual, methodological, and data-analytical issues in stimulus control research. Fundamental issues in basic stimulus control methods such as simple discrimination, generalization, and transfer will be described in detail. The presentation will uncover several unresolved issues in even very basic methods, such as simple discrimination. In addition, the presentation will provide examples of advanced methods of establishing very precise stimulus control of motor behavior. Other issues such as the role of intermittency of reinforcement in stimulus control and establishment of errorless learning will be covered as well. The primary focus of the presentation will be methodology and analysis of empirical results in both experimental and applied behavior analysis.