If you wanted to encourage a child to eat a more healthy diet, at first you might smile or nod when the child was willing to take a small bite of a healthy food item on her plate. Then you might only smile and nod when the child took a full bite of the food. Then you might only respond when the child ate several bites, and finally only when the child finished the serving on her plate. You are changing this child's behavior through the process of___

Shaping

Explanation:

Shaping: In psychology, the term "shaping" is described as one of the different "conditioning" paradigms or behavioral modification technique in which an individual's behavior is being reinforced successively to get "closer and closer approximations" related to the desired behavior. The concept of shaping was first introduced by a famous psychologist named B. F. Skinner.

In the question above, the given statement signifies the concept of shaping.