Last updated May 6, 2004

MULTIPLE CHOICE:

A. Habituation
B. Sensitization
C. Adaptation
D. Learned Irrelevance

The answer is ADAPTATION.

Excel-erated Learning, page 38:

"I sometimes hear habituation and adaptation used interchangeably. Adaptation is quite different because it does not involve learning. Adaptation refers to the physical process of tiring. Perceiving a stimulus requires that the animal uses its senses. The sensory neurons can tire and when they do, they actually stop working."

WHY IN THE WORLD DOES IT MATTER?

Part two:

Hooray, Cathy!
Yes. It matters. The reason it would be important to know what occurred as a result of the dogs losing their ability to detect bombs in this case would be so that the trainers working the dogs can take pre-cautions to prevent this from happening in future bomb detecting missions. I don't know if it's a question of whether it is a number of bomb detections that the dog can do before adaptation starts to occur, or that the trainer should be so tuned into his (or hers) own dog's change in behaviors when sniffing for bombs. I prefer the latter choice as it most probably depends on the size and concentration of the bombs. That choice also lends itself to the notion that the trainer and the dog are true partners, and the trainer should be the dogs advocate whenever necessary.....especially when on duty. When working, of course it's important to stay on task, but to truly be an effective team for the job, the trainer absolutely needs to be in tune with his partners level of effectiveness or lack thereof at all times and take action before a level of adaptation occurs that the dog could not recover from quickly.

My comment:
Great answer, Cathy! In order to give accurate advice to our students, we must understand learning theory and behavior. In order for the trainers of these bomb detection dogs to respond correctly, they MUST understand the behavioral science behind the dog's failure to do their job.

Imagine if the handler presumed that the dog was refusing to work? He might correct the dog for something it had no ability to change - this could totally ruin a dog. What if the handler thought the dog had totally lost its skills? The dog might be put back into intensive training or even retired, when all it needed was a little time off to "recover its senses"! On the more serious end of the spectrum - in this line of work, if a handler didn't realize that adaptation might occur, continued to push his dog beyond its limits, dog and handler could be in very real danger of blowing up!

Definitions (from Excel-erated Learning):

A. Habituation - the ability to stop reacting to meaningless stimuli. Anything that occurs over and over again may lead to habituation. [Habituation is generally to "emotional" stimuli - adaptation is to physical.]

B. Sensitization - "sort of the opposite of habituation" - Stimuli that elicit really strong emotional reactions, such as fear, often don't habituate. Instead they continue to affect the general arousal of the animal and make the response even stronger. Sensitization is actually quite different from habituation because it is more general. Habituation is very specific. [These are survival skills!] Intense stimuli often lead to sensitization while weak stimuli usually habituate.

C. Adaptation - (see above)

D. Learned Irrelevance - similar to habituation. An animal that ceases to attending to a stimulus because it has no consequence is displaying learned irrelevance. You will discover that the dog who heard the command before learns much more slowly than the dog who had never heard the command before. That's because the dog who had heard the command many times before learned the irrelevance of the command so doesn't even pay attention to it when you use it during training. [THIS is specifically why we encourage our students to NOT use the verbal command week one and add it only after behavior is solid and the hand signal has been learned.]

The primary differences between these four types of stimulus response:

Habituation and Sensitization are classical conditioning - emotional.
.......Intense stimuli often lead to sensitization while weak stimuli usually habituate.
Adaptation is physical.
Learned Irrelevance is operant.

Another important difference between habituation and learned irrelevance:
Habituation is very prone to spontaneous recovery - only after many sessions will long-term habituation occur.

In Learned Irrelevance it is difficult to train the relevance back in - it is very hard to reverse. [Which is why it's often easier to change to a different cue and abandon the repeatly nagged cue.] Learned irrelevance is not susceptible to spontaneous recovery.

A response that has habituated recovers after an interval of time has passed without experiencing the stimulus. A stimulus that is irrelevant to the dog will be more difficult to condition at a later date even if a substantial amount of time has passed between the exposure and the conditioning.

MORE FROM CATHY!

>Regarding the learning theory response...
>So if a dog stops responding to a plane flying overhead, that would be learned irrelevance?

I think this is one of those "depends on how they asked the question" ones. Learned irrelevance would be in regard to learning - if the sound of the airplane cued a behavior (running out and looking) that was never reinforced and diminished over time until the sound was eventually ignored.

People who live by an airport no longer run out to look up everytime a plane goes by. (I only go out and look up if it's a helicopter or fighter jet noise that is unlike the ones that I tune out?) Is that habituation: doesn't hear it any more ("was that a B-52 or an airliner?" "I dunno I wasn't paying attention and didn't even hear it") or learned irrelevance (hears it but doesn't need to go check?)

I think, for a dog, no longer noticing an airplane might be more habituation - "stops attending to meaningless stimuli" - I'd assume that it would begin as a "startle effect" -emotional - (big bird shaped thing, loud noise) that over time didn't end up being dangerous so the dog soon ignores it.

>and a dog that stops responding to a doorbell would be habituation? What about a ringing phone?

The waning of emotional excitement over the sound of the doorbell because no one is there/people ignore the dog would be habituation ... the phone never applies to the dog (unless it's a deaf person's trained dog) so that would be learned irrelevance.

>And what about the smell of cooking something yummy for dinner -- if a dog doesn't respond to that, it surely couldn't be adaptation. Wouldn't that one be learned irrelevance?

hmmm. The diminished excited woo-hoo behavior - no longer running to the kitchen expecting dinner would be habituation - ... the salivation at the smell, hunger stimulation would be innate and not under the dog's control ... adaptation? The not running to the kitchen at the sound of human dishes would be learned irrelevance and only rushing in at the klinking of dog dishes would be learned relevance? (The sound would become a discriminative stimulus signalling dog dinner.)