Simple Stimulus Learning

a. Explain the concept of habituation. The American Heritage Dictionary defines habituation in terms of psychology is the decline of a conditioned response following repeated exposure to the conditioned stimulus. That is an action done over and over in response to a specific situation. One way we learn is by repetition of a specific response across a number of situations (Carducci, 2002). The more we do something the more we have learned it. Then when exposed to the stimulus (an agent, action, or condition that elicits or accelerates a response), regardless of situation, then we perform the behavior.
Habituation takes place in small children when trying to teach a new concept or in adults with amnesia when needing to learn a lost skill. Schools use habituation for spelling test and new math concepts. On Mondays students are given the list of spelling words, then each day the write out the words [five times each], find the definitions of each word, write the words in sentences, and then tested on the spelling of each word on Friday. A person suffering from amnesia that lost the knowledge of driving can regain the skill through habituation.
b. Analyze the factors that affect perceptual learning. As with most learning, positive reinforcement or rewards have played a factor in how quickly and adequate we learn. Perceptual learning occurs when there is repeated exposure to a specific stimulus followed by a reward, in the form of praise, monetary, or good feelings. It has been proposed that perceptual learning may occur through a reinforcement process, in which consistently pairing stimuli with reward is sufficient for learning (Franko, 2010).

In the spelling test example above the positive reinforcement in learning the spelling words is the grade received on the spelling test. Another important factor to perceptual learning is that the stimulus is recognizable and the reinforcement is desirable. In the amnesia case above the person knew how to drive at one time, and currently has a driver’s license (their reinforcement). They would be more inclined to want to learn to drive again to regain independence and also to utilize the already have license.
c. Examine the effects of stimulus exposure. If used correctly stimuli have the intended effect of response and learning. The same stimuli will not work the same on everyone, and will not always produce the same response. A good stimulus done correctly will have a positive effect with the desired response (Mundy, 2009). Just as a bad stimuli done incorrectly will have a negative effect with either no response or the opposite desired response (Mundy, 2009).
A stimuli that is exposed to too quickly will result in false memory; person replaces what they think they saw (the lost exposure) with an image from memory and report that as what they saw. Schedule of exposure to similar stimuli contributes to the degree of perceptual learning over and above the amount of exposure in a variety of species and stimuli (Mundy, 2009).