The response (R) is the behavior that the child exhibits after and as a result of the discriminative stimulus. This latter point is an important one to keep in mind, the response that we are interested in is only that which is a result of the given instruction or other targeted event. If the child is reacting to stimuli other than those that the teacher has targeted, the instruction may need to be rethought. Is the environment too distracting? Does the child have difficulty with stimulus control that may need to be addressed?

To ensure that everyone working with a child, and the child himself, is aware of what is to be considered a correct response, the criteria for the expected response should be described in detail before that trial is begun. Consider the following target response:

"Sarah will receptively identify a letter when requested."

At first glance this might appear to be an accurately described behavior, but I'd argue that it needs further refinement. How exactly is Sarah supposed to identify the behavior? Is gesturing towards it accurate enough? Does she need to pick it up and hand it to someone? What if Sarah, after she were asked to identify the letter T, were to play with her hair for 20 seconds before pointing to that card? This ambiguity can be avoided if the target is rewritten a bit more specifically:

"Sarah will pick up and hand to her teacher a card displaying the requested letter within 5 seconds of the request."

There are three possible response behaviors in a given trial: a correct response, an incorrect response, and no response. Correct responses are typically followed with an activity or treat that the child finds pleasurable or exciting, in the hope that the child will continue to produce that response. This is called reinforcement and it is the subject of our next section.

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