Stimulus Control Stimulus control is used to indicate that certain behaviors occur in some situations and not in others. We often wish to assess a behavior in terms of the conditions under which it occurs. Any test in which a student is given instructions and is asked to answer questions, is a test of stimulus control. Are the answers under the control of the questions. For example, the quality of handwriting could be judged as good, average, and poor.
Quality is usually a judgement, especially in sports such as diving, boxing, and gymnastics.
Quality is a refinement of one or more of the characteristics previously mentioned. For example in figure-skating, topography is very important, such as landing on one foot, instead of two, or worse yet landing on no feet. Responses cumulate, or are added to the previous response. The slope of the line gives us an idea of how many responses occurred over a given period of time. A Steep slope indicates a very high rate of responding.