Talk:Habituation

message: I'm glad this article makes sense to psychologists, but it does not address what ordinary people mean when they refer to habits. There must be something intelligent that can be said about habits. You'd think we could edit something out of William James' The Principles of Psychology (the book, NOT the article) that people would find comprehensible and would provide a bridge to contemporary psychological and psychotherapeutic thought. DCDuring 01:37, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps you are looking for Habit (psychology)? Richard001 20:51, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Why isn't there an article closer to the ordinary sense of habit?

message: The author of this section seems confused about the meaning of the term as it applies in this context (as a psychology term).  Habituation does not refer to things done out of habit, as the section seems to imply, but rather refers exclusively to the diminishment of a response due to repeated introductions of a stimulus.  For example, seeking out food is not a habituated response.  The food (stimulus) will continue to elicit eating (response) if the animal is to survive.  What this describes is a habit, not habituation.  To say an animal has been habituated to food would be to say the animal is no longer very interested in eating due to the repeated presence of food (though not to be confused with satiety).
It is true that acclimation and habituation are similar, with acclimation describing a decreased response to the environment as a whole rather than a single distinct stimulus.  Habituation is also essential to our ability to discern important stimuli from background noise, like the section notes.  However, most of the rest of the section needs to be rewritten to avoid confusion over the meaning of the term. --Foxhound199 (talk) 00:22, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Background section? 

message: Neurobiology of Habituation
It is a neutral form of learning in which a neutral stimulus is repeated many times. The first time it is applied it is novel and evokes a reaction (the orienting reflex or "what is it?" response). However, it evokes less and less electrical response as it is repeated. Eventually the subject becomes habituated to the stimulus and ignores it. This is associated with decreased release of neurotransmitter from the presynaptic terminal because of decreased intracellular Ca++. The decrease in intracellular Ca++ is due to gradual inactivation of Ca++ channels .
...
I've placed this section in Talk, as it is:
a) factually inaccurate
b) confusing
c) very important
I think the author is trying to describe the mechanisms of habituation as mapped out in Aplysia, but I can't tell.  If so, it's not entirely correct to say that it's neutral or that a neutral stimulus was used.  It's also incorrect to say that habituation doesn't occur until the response is completely extinguished; habituation occurs throughout the process in steps.  Also, to describe these mechanisms as underlying all habituation is misleading and potentially inaccurate; for this section to exist it needs to be clear that it describes habituation in a specific circumstance to avoid suggesting that the mechanisms of mammalian behavioral habituation are known and identical.
I'll leave this for a few to see if anyone else chimes in; if not, I'll see about rewriting this and bringing it back.  If someone else wants to give it a go, please feel free. :)Abidagus (talk) 08:20, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neurobiology section 

message: I noticed in a very brief review one possible error, but I may be wrong, the powers that be may have decided to reorganize their terms.  What I've learned is that sensitization is an increase in responding however elicited by a second stimulus (or multiple other stimuli), not the original stimulus (with habituation the decrease is always in reaction to further exposures to the same stimulus).  The opposite of habituation would likely be a process called potentiation, and potentiation likely fits the definition given in the Wikipedia entry for sensitization (which is wrong - again if we are going by the sources that I know of - see Catania's "Learning").  The opposite of sensitization I would think would be desensitization, and there is a procedure termed systematic desensitization to help people learn to overcome their fears or phobias (the idea being that the fear or phobia is conditioned via sensitization pairing therefore it can be unconditioned, however if the response is unconditioned then no sensitization occurred and thus also desensitization would likely be ineffective).
I would also say, in the first paragraph that it should be referred to as operant conditioning (when referencing extinction) and not simply say conditioning since many of these respondent processes do in fact involve pairing of stimuli (i.e., conditioning) compare for instance the case of Pavlov who noticed that his student who brought the meat powder, when entering the room with the dog without meat powder, would elicit salvation from the dog and thus screw up all of his original experiments on the salivation process..BenjaminSchooley (talk) 14:08, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sensitization is not really the opposite of habituation 

message: General and anecdotal adult self diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder using web questionnaires or magazine articles is now a common place practice that would normally be rightfully considered unscientific and ambiguous. When I read of research showing specific failure to habituate to facial/social stimulus, I think of my friends telling me for years that I was missing the non-verbal cues. Having asperger's syndrome almost purely without any other disorder is rare. Having accelerated language devlopement and high intelligence can compensate for a blind-spot in non-associative/non-verbal skills by using associative learning about social cues, a more arduous and time consuming technique. For all I may have learned, at age 48 I can still easily miss immediately obvious social cues, I still do not sensitise or habituate properly to specific kinds of stimulus though I understand them logically. I am excited to learn that sensitization and habituation research in other species offers the potential of providing an animal model of ASD and other conditions that, as I have been forced to admit about myself, can be so mild in humans they may be thought of as personality variations. 71.212.28.240 (talk) 19:22, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for sharing your input, but just a kind reminder that these Talk pages are about improving the article rather than a general discussion thread about the topic itself. Humanatbest (talk) 17:46, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  ASD & failure to habituate to social stimulus 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I think the section on drug habituation will be more appropriate in the page about drug tolerance than in  habituation.I think there’s too much  information in this page. Angunnu (talk) 13:34, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Drug habituation 

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thread_title:  "[[:Accustimisation]]" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: The redirect Accustimization has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached.  Utopes (talk / cont) 00:59, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
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