Chapter 3 Habituation, Sensitization & Familiarization

3.1 Behavioral Processes

Habituation- When you’re exposed to something so much that your reaction to it decreases.
Perceptual Learning- We better process and recognize frequent stimuli (the same ad, a stop sign)

Acoustic Startle Experiment: A rat was exposed to 100 bell rings, each ring slightly decreased his response. Tell us that we habituate to things we’re constantly exposed to.

Dis-Habituation- When you input a new stimulus into a repetitive one, it changes your response. (when you watch the same video over but there’s a new clip put into it that you haven’t seen before).
Stimulus Specificity- When habituation only happens to one specific instance or object. It’s not generalized.
- Seeing a red toy for the 20th time won’t impact your interest in seeing a new blue toy.
Spontaneous Recovery- When your stimulus stops for a while, you become unhabituated.
- When you were scared, then weren’t scared for a day. You’re likely to get as scared as you did the first time.

Sensitization- When a repeated stimulus heightens your reaction