What is a stimulus?
a change in the physical or chemical environment that elicits a reaction.
what is The Orienting Response (OR)?
an investigatory reflex that happens after a new or unexpected stimulus.
its a composite of several physiological and behavioral reactions.
the OR depends on stimulus intensity, the situation, the potential for danger, and other factors.
what is habituation?
the decrease in orienting reactions to a stimulus that is repeatedly presented.
- An initially new stimulus becomes familiar with repeated presentations, and thus becomes less likely to elicit an OR.
- indicated by less responding over trials
what is skin conductance response?
measures subtle changes in electrical conductivity in the skin that are associated with arousal or emotionality.
- a component of the lie detector test
what does parametric mean?
taking one dimension of an independent variable and systematically varying it to see the effect on the response.
eg: changing the spacing of stimulus presentations across a range of values and measure the amount of response at each spacing.
what is spontaneous recovery?
the return of the response after an
interval of time without stimulations.
if the delay interval is sufficiently long the reaction to the previously habituated stimulus may completely recover.
what happens after repeated habituation?
If habituation is done multiple times, each separated by some time, habituation occurs more quickly during successive sessions.
The spontaneous
recovery (loss of habituation) is less, and habituation would need fewer stimulus
presentations as compared to the initial and previous sessions. Habituation accumulates
across trials and sessions.
what is short-term habituation?
- occurs within a closely-spaced block of trials, or from one stimulus presentation to the next.
- the reduction in OR size from the first trials on Day 1 to the last trials on Day 1; and for each day thereafter.
- the decrease in the responding within each session.
what is long-term habituation?
- the overall decrease in response across successive sessions.
- the reduction in responding from day to day; overall, the
response is smaller on Day 2 than on Day 1, and so one across the next days.
what is dishabituation?
reinstatement of orienting to a habituated stimulus (stimulus #1)
by presentation of a different stimulus (stimulus #2)
