Habituation

Habituation is a gradual reduction in an animal’s fear or avoidance response after repeated exposure to a non-threatening stimulus. It reflects learning that the stimulus does not predict danger, rather than sensory fatigue or deliberate suppression.

Threat learning: Learning processes that shape how organisms detect, predict, and respond to danger. Habituation reduces defensive responses when repeated encounters fail to confirm a threat.
Non-associative learning: Learning in which repeated exposure to one stimulus changes the response without pairing it with another stimulus. Habituation is a basic form of learning through repeated exposure alone.
Exposure therapy: A psychological treatment that reduces distress by structured contact with feared situations or cues. Repeated safe contact can reduce avoidance, though treatment change also involves new learning.
Ivan Pavlov: A Russian physiologist whose studies of conditioning shaped experimental research on learning. His laboratory tradition helped establish systematic study of animal responses to repeated stimuli.
Renewal effect: The return of an extinguished response when an organism encounters a cue outside the extinction context. It illustrates how fear reduction after exposure may fail to transfer across settings.
Amygdala: A set of brain nuclei involved in processing emotional significance, including threat. Its circuits help regulate defensive responses that can diminish with safe exposure.
Orienting response: An automatic shift of attention toward a novel or significant stimulus. Fearful avoidance can include orienting responses that become less pronounced with safe repetition.
Systematic desensitization: A behavioral treatment combining gradual exposure to feared stimuli with relaxation training. Its graded encounters use repeated exposure to reduce fear and avoidance.
Robert Thompson and Donald Spencer: Researchers who proposed a formal account of habituation’s behavioral properties in 1966. Their criteria organized findings such as response decrement, recovery, and dishabituation.
Spontaneous recovery: The reappearance of a diminished response after time has passed without further training. A delayed return of avoidance complicates claims that repeated exposure erased fear.

Linked from 38 pages