Extinction is one explanation.
In other words, the conditioned behavior eventually stops.
For example, imagine that you taught your dog to shake hands.
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Over time, the trick became less interesting.
You stop rewarding the behavior and eventually stop asking your dog to shake.
Eventually, the response becomes extinct, and your dog no longer displays the behavior.
When the bell was repeatedly presented without the presentation of food, the salivation response eventually became extinct.
Inoperant conditioning, extinction shows up when a response is no longer reinforced following a discriminative stimulus.
A rat was pressing the lever in an experiment on satiation when the pellet dispenser jammed.
I was not there at the time, and when I returned I found a beautiful curve.
The rat had gone on pressing although no pellets were received…
It was a Friday afternoon and there was no one in the laboratory who I could tell.
Examples of Extinction
Let’s take a closer look at a few more examples of extinction.
Imagine that a researcher has trained a lab rat to press a key to receive a food pellet.
What happens when the researcher stops delivering the food?
While extinction will not occur immediately, it will after time.
Conditionedtaste aversionscan also be affected by extinction.
Imagine that you ate some ice cream right before getting sick and throwing it up.
You might start by taking just a few small tastes over and over again.
As you continued to eat the food without getting sick, your conditioned aversion would eventually diminish.
Spontaneous recovery refers to the sudden reappearance of a previously extinct response.
This sort of partial schedule results in behavior that is stronger and more resistant to extinction.
The strength of the original conditioning can play an important role.
Personality factors might also play a role in extinction.
One study found that children who were more anxious were slower to habituate to a sound.
As a result, their fear response to the sound was slower to become extinct than non-anxious children.
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