applied psychology

1. HABITUATION AND
ADAPTATION

2.  Definition
 Forms of habituation
 Characteristics
 Why habituation occurs
 Habituation in relationship
 Drug habituation
 Psychotherapy (exposure therapy)
 Examples of Habituation( animals & human)
 Theories

3. DEFINITION
 “Habituation is a
decrease in response to a
stimulus after repeated
presentations.”
 Simplest form of
learning
 Example – If you live
near a busy street , you
learn to ignore the sound
of traffic

4.  Short Term Habituation:
 Lasts only a few minutes
 Best if stimulus applied at longer at short
intervals (2s)
Example, 300 loud sounds over 5 hours
 Long-term habituation:
 Last weeks
 Best if stimulus applied at long intervals (30-s)
Example, 1 loud sound per day for one month

5.  Change: Changing the intensity or duration of the
stimulation may result in a reoccurrence of the original
response
 Duration: If the habituation stimulus is not presented for a
long enough periods before a sudden reintroduction, the
response will once again reappear at full-strength
 Frequency: The more frequently a stimulus is presented,
the faster habituation will occur.
 Intensity: Very intense stimuli tend to result in slower
habituation.

6.  Habituation occurs in your everyday life, likely without you even
realizing it.
 Habituation also occurs in areas beyond outward senses.
 This rarely is the case. It may briefly feel really good and different to
have that boost in their paycheck, but over time it becomes the new
normal. Life goes back to the way it was before.
 This is another theme of habituation to experience or circumstance –
people tend to overestimate the impact the thing will have on them in
the future.
 The phenomenon of overestimating the effect something will have in
the future is known as focusing illusion.

7. Habituation in relationships can become problematic,
however, when it leads to taking the other person for
granted. Long-term relationships can often fall victim to this
problem.
 Over time, you might feel that your partner does not appreciate
the things that you contribute to the relationship. Or perhaps it
is your partner who feels that they are being overlooked.

8. These techniques help for overcome habituation in
relationships:
 Focus on the positive
 Practice gratitude..
 Recall those feelings from the start of your relationship.
 Try something new.

9. Exposure Therapy
Exposure therapy uses habituation to help people overcome
their fears. Once they have become habituated to this
experience, they will expose themselves to increasingly closer
approximations to the real source of their anxiety until they
finally confront the fear itself.

10.  Scientists and doctors use this term to describe a patient’s
psychological dependence to a substance, such as drugs or
alcohol. The more they use the substance, the less of a threat
they perceive, so they use it without concern.

12. There are a few different theories that seek to explain why
habituation occurs:
 Comparator theory of habituation
 Dual-factor theory of habituation
Comparator theory of habituation: suggests that our brain
creates a model of the expected stimulus. With continued
presentations, the stimulus is compared to the model and, if it
matches, the response is inhibited
Dual-factor theory of habituation: suggests that there are
underlying neural processes that regulate responsiveness to
different stimuli.

14.  History
 Definition
 Types
 Importance
 Theory Plant show
 Sensory Adaptation
 Differentiate

15. Empedocles did not believe that adaptation required a final
cause (a purpose), but thought that it "came about naturally,
since such things survived." Aristotle did believe in final
causes, but assumed that species were fixed
The second of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s two factors
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed
• Dobzhansky produced evidence

18. “Adaptation is the physical or behavioral characteristic of an
organism that helps an organism to survive better in the
surrounding environment.”
For example, the shape of animal’s teeth depends on its diet

19.  Adaptations can be of the following types:
• Structural adaptation
• Behavioral adaptation
• Psychological adaptation

20. “A feature of an organism’s body that helps it
to survive/reproduce”
 For Example, A body parts aid in survival;
• Fins
• Gills
• Teeth
• Streamline body
• No eye lids

21. “The responses made by an organism that
help it to survive/reproduce”
 For Example,
• Migration
• Hibernation
• Methods of gathering
• Finding shelter
• Defending oneself
• Raising Young

22. “A body process that helps an organism to
survive/reproduce”
For Example,

23.  Adaptation is essential for the survival of living organisms.
Animals, which are unable to adapt to changing
environmental changes die. These adaptations are a result of
genetic changes. The animals that survive pass on the
mutated genes to their offspring's. This is known as natural
selection.
 Safely is improved
 Independence is maintained
 Social rules & connection are better maintained
 Family & caregivers “worry” less

24. The theory of adaptation was proposed by Charles Darwin
According to the adaptation theory, there are different
changes that take place when the habitat changes:
 Habitat Tracking: This is when a species finds another
similar environment to which it has inhabited before.
 Extinction: When the species is unable to find such an
environment, it dies or becomes extinct.
 Genetic Change: This occurs when organisms with slight
genetic changes are better adapted to changed habitat with
better access to resources and mating partners.

26.  “Sensory adaptation is a reduction in sensitivity to a stimulus
after constant exposure to it:.
 Examples:
 Scent: Smokers are not bothered by the smell of tobacco
smoke the way nonsmokers are, because smokers are
accustomed to the odor.
 Sight: When you go into a dark room or outside at night,
your eyes eventually adjust to the darkness because your
pupils enlarge to let in more light. Likewise, when you are in
bright light, your eyes adjust by the narrowing of your
pupils.

27.  Touch: When you jump into a cold swimming pool or first get
into a hot tub, the water may feel unpleasantly cold or much too
hot, but eventually, your body adjusts to the temperature and it
feels only mildly cool or perfectly pleasant and even, eventually,
too cold or too warm.
 Taste: With the first bite of a very flavorful dish, you'll notice the
strong saltiness, sourness, or sweetness of the food. But after a
few mouthfuls, your taste buds will adapt and the flavor will not
be as pronounced.
 Hearing: A classic example is city dwellers who are able to tune
out traffic and other urban sounds; their sleep, for example, isn't
disturbed by the sounds outside their windows.

29.  Attention helps us learn in school, get ahead in the
workplace, and build successful relationships, but when it's
compromised, achievement of any kind becomes far more
challenging. General, attention deficits have been related to
lesions in the frontal lobe and in the basal ganglia visual
attention deficits have been related to the posterior parietal
cortex and the thalamus, in addition to areas of the midbrain
related to eye movements. Here are two examples of failing
attention:
 ADHD
 Change blindness and intentional blindness
 Spatial neglect

30. “A condition that makes it difficult for children to
pay attention and control their behavior”

31.  When attended information in the visual world unnoticed
 Change blindness when attended objects change without the
viewer noticing

32.  It is an attention dysfunction in which participants overlook
the half of their visual field that is contralateral to on the
opposite side of the hemisphere of the brain that has a lesion.
It is a result mainly of unilateral lesions in the parietal and
frontal lobes, most often in the right hemisphere.