On the Role of Attending Behavior in Stimulus Control

In order for a stimulus to exert some sort of control of behavior, the organism must be attending to that stimulus in one way or another. Even though adequate stimuli are present in the environment to guide behavior, the learner may not sense them and the appropriate response may fail to occur. Attending behavior have been studied both by looking at the degree of stimulus control in the presence and absence of certain stimuli and by measuring eye movements directly. This presentation will firstly give a brief overview of research done on attending behavior and especially eye movements in behavior analytic literature. Secondly, discuss the role attending behavior plays in stimulus control, and lastly, show some eye-tracking data form our lab.