Habituation is best described as?

• A. It's a gradual decrease in responsiveness to a stimulus as a result of repeated experience with the stimulus.
• B. It's a process of increasing responsiveness to a previously neutral stimulus.
• C. It's learning a new response through reinforcement.
• D. It's extinction of a learned response.

Answer: (B)

Habituation is a simple form of learning where an animal shows a progressively weaker response to a stimulus after repeated exposure. As the stimulus becomes familiar and non-threatening, the nervous system reduces its reaction, allowing attention to be redirected to more important cues. This differs from sensitization, where exposure to a stimulus increases the response rather than diminishes it. It also isn’t about learning a new behavior through reinforcement, and it isn’t extinction, which is the loss of a previously learned response due to the absence of reinforcement. In practical terms, habituation explains why a dog or a handler may stop reacting to a dull, constant background stimulus after it’s been encountered many times.