ABSTRACT
One problem commonly faced by special education and early childhood teachers is to teach autonomy, independence, and decision making. Although self-direction is an important social skill, the learning paradigm employed in classroom settings contradicts self-determinism. This chapter describes the concept of stimulus manipulation, including both stimulus shaping and stimulus fading, for practitioners and researchers who are interested in developing self-directed learning. The origins of the concepts of stimulus shaping and stimulus fading can be traced to Terrace's basic research with pigeons. The need exists for a broad terminology that refers to all combinations of S+ and S- manipulations used to achieve stimulus control; also need a method to describe the variations within stimulus-control ttechnology. On the basis of the proposed definition of stimulus manipulation, the variations of stimulus manipulation need to be classified to facilitate an understanding of what manipulations are possible and effective.
