Which procedure is commonly associated with achieving stimulus control?

Stimulus control refers to the degree to which a behavior is influenced by a particular stimulus. The procedure commonly associated with achieving stimulus control is prompting and fading.

Prompting involves giving cues or assistance to help an individual perform a desired behavior in the presence of a specific stimulus. For example, if teaching a child to raise their hand when they want to speak, a teacher might initially prompt the child by saying, "Raise your hand." The goal is to help the child associate the behavior of raising their hand with the classroom context.

Fading then comes into play as the prompts are gradually removed, allowing the individual to perform the desired behavior independently in response to the stimulus. Through this systematic reduction of prompts, the behavior becomes more directly controlled by the presence of the stimulus, rather than relying on external cues.

This process enhances the individual’s ability to generalize the behavior across different situations, establishing stronger stimulus control where the behavior reliably occurs in the presence of the relevant stimulus. Thus, prompting and fading are essential strategies in establishing and maintaining stimulus control over a given behavior.