Habituation and Exposure

[Page 1589]Habituation is a basic learning process that suggests that an animal’s response to a stimulus will progressively decrease on repeated applications or presentations of that stimulus. The published literature on habituation often refers to the study of basic behavioral responses of a body-related nature, typically viewed as simple reflexes. Thus, habituation is often studied at a neurophysiological level, assessing body-based changes such as motor contractions, sweating, or changes in pulse rates or blood flow, measured using psychophysiological measures such as electromyographic responses, galvanic skin responses, plethysmographic responses, or blood pressure. Advances in research on habituation may also use measures of cellular or molecular responses of neural activity as measured by functional imagery. In all responses and measures discussed, the process of habituation suggests that ...