Habituation: do we lack it?

Post Reply New Topic

I study psychology (my wife is working on her master's degree in psych, and thus I read her material and study her work). And I have run into a term about behavior learning and development called Habituation.

Habituation occurs when an individual becomes accustomed and or desensitized certain stimuli and thus no longer responds or acknowledges this stimulus. In other words habituation is a “decrease in orienting (and other) reactions to a stimulus” (Terry, W. S. 2009).

Which makes me think, most typical individuals can become habituated and desensitize to certain stimuli such as bright lights, background noise, a train running on tracks near the house, the honking of cars or the radio. The creaking of the house.

But environmental factors tend to affect us in the spectrum greatly. Like we cannot filter out data that is not useful to us in comparison to the tasks we are performing such as trying to read with background noise, or pay attention to someone talking to us over the din of a restaurant without having to read their lips so much.

I know we also have the ability to hyper focus, which allows us to filter the information to an extreme degree and when overwhelmed we drift . . . zone out, as my wife calls it.

Just food for thoughts. Any comments welcome, any ideas or more data would be interesting to see. I hope this post was not overly long or boring.

References:

Terry, W. S. (2009). Learning and memory: Basic principles, processes, and procedures (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn Bacon.

That is a very interesting theory. I can relate to everything you wrote. I've never heard of habituation before.

I had not either, which is why I also found it very interesting. Another concept that ties into this is perceptual learning, which is a step below cognitive, higher learning. Which is the process by which habituation has long-lasting behavioral effects such as caution entering a new room because we have become habituated to banging our shins on furniture in new areas.

I was taught about habituation back in my high school anatomy and physiology class. It confused me because except for smell, I do not habituate very much.

I can hyperfocus, but generally only when reading a fiction book I like. Beyond that I am constantly aware of the random sound and light stimuli around me.

inurement is another word for it. I've never been able to tune out certain things so I must avoid them.

I do not think we lack habituation. I think certain stimuli are so much more intense for us, that it is harder. If an NT heard sound at the volume I did, I believe they would go insane. A boyfriend of mine went to a haunted house one time and went through this room where it had flood lights flashing on and off. It was very intense for him. He described it to me and asked if that is how I feel when I go out in public during daylight. I am fortunate enough to work nights and rarely have to go out during daytime. Our experiences were very similar, and I believe that there is no getting used to the stress and horror that he experienced in that haunted house.

I hear so intensely, and yet I've become accustomed to the train that passes near my home. I anticipate the schedule and just 'suck it up.' However, if a train passes I was not anticipating, I have a meltdown. So I believe we are capable of habituation. While it's more difficult for us, it is not impossible as long as we know what to expect.

I was in significant amount of pain the first 27 years of my life and I only became aware of it two times before that.
The first time I was 3 and had a serious meltdwn, until my mom spanked my until I quit screaming.
The second time I was 20 ad freaked out so badly that I drank and did drugs and generally lied to everyone and myself about it until I fotgot about it again.

Still, I recognize that it influenced my mood, thinking, and behavior that entire time even tough I wasn't aware of it.
So I think that while we may, over time, be able to block out persistant problematic stimuli, it doesn't mean that we aren't aware of that stimuli on some level, it's just not necessarily on a conscious level.

Mirror21 writes, "... and when overwhelmed we drift . . . zone out, as my wife calls it. "
I know that this is so, from personal experience. I drift into daydreams, fantasies. Do you think it is possible for one of us to drift so strongly, or so often, that he remains in that state to which he has drifted? Could one penetrate fantasy worlds so deeply that the person remains there, drowns in psychosis? Or could one find existence in the drift-state preferable to the normative state, the state of consensual reality, and choose to remain, or to substitute that psychic life, where anything can be made to occur (al least, at first), for the mundane psychic life, strictly bound by time, space, and causality?