1.2 Habituation

what is it? habituation as a declining tendency to respond to stimuli that are familiar due to repeated exposure. → we get used to things, we might react strongly to something that we experienced for the first time, but if we experienced it over and over again, we’ll react less strongly.

What is it for? an adaptive mechanism to keep us focusing on new objects and events.

Similarly for any of us dealing with our environments, something new should capture attention, something old less so, because we already know about it. It turns out habituation is an extremely important learning mechanism. Without it, I’m not sure how we could survive in the world.