Stimulus control is a fundamental concept in Applied Behavior Analysis where the presence or absence of a specific antecedent stimulus or set of stimuli reliably occasions an increase or decrease in the probability of a particular behavior In the examples provided the students differential participation in English vs Calculus and the individuals Fireball drinking varying with different social groups friends vs family both demonstrate that the respective behaviors are under the control of the specific environmental contexts stimuli The behavior is more likely to occur in the presence of the discriminative stimulus SD and less likely to occur in the presence of the stimulus delta Sdelta This is distinct from stimulus generalization where a behavior occurs in the presence of stimuli that are similar to the original SD or response differentiation which involves differential reinforcement of specific forms of a response An extinction burst while involving a change in behavior is a temporary increase in the frequency intensity or variability of an unreinforced behavior at the beginning of an extinction procedure which is not what these examples are primarily illustrating