The Shriver Center Behavioral Technology Group is a world leader in stimulus control research. It was born of a program founded decades ago by Murray Sidman at Massachusetts General Hospital and was constituted to develop the scientific foundation of effective teaching and evaluation of individuals with intellectual disabilities, particularly those for whom special education is ineffective. The program is focused on applications in communication, functional academics (e.g., word recognition, counting), and behavioral prerequisites (e.g., attending to relevant aspects of instructional stimuli). The long-term goal of the group is to develop a true technology of teaching that permits one to (1) specify a given set of entry behavioral prerequisites, (2) build upon those prerequisites with systematic, well-defined teaching procedures, and (3) ensure a positive teaching outcome. A central feature of the group's research is computer technology that supports effective, efficient learning. Since 1984, the Behavioral Technology Group has received more than $15,000,000 in National Institutes of Health funding to support its programs and has contributed more than 200 publications to journals and other scholarly outlets.

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