What describes the time it takes for a behavior to occur after a stimulus?

Latency describes the time between the presentation of a stimulus and the occurrence of the desired behavior. This measurement is critical in behavioral analysis as it helps practitioners understand how quickly an individual responds to a given stimulus. For instance, if a teacher asks a student to complete a task, the latency would be the time it takes for the student to begin the task after the teacher's request. Monitoring latency can provide insights into a person's responsiveness or level of motivation and can be useful in designing interventions that aim to reduce delays in responses.

The other options represent different behavioral measurements: interresponse time refers to the time between two consecutive instances of a behavior; duration measures how long a behavior lasts when it occurs; and frequency counts the number of occurrences of a behavior within a specified time frame. Each of these metrics provides valuable information, but they do not specifically capture the time interval following a stimulus, which is precisely what latency denotes.