When Kathy is in the shower and someone flushes the toilet,the water turns hot and she gets burned.Soon,Kathy becomes classically conditioned to fear the toilet flushing when she is in the shower.When Kathy visits her parents she does not get burned when someone flushes the toilet while she is in the shower.When she returns home and hears the toilet flush while in the shower,Kathy immediately feels a surge of fear.This example best illustrates the fact that extinction is
A) a form of learning that inhibits, not deletes, what is learned.
B) an adaptive response to delete information from memory associations.
C) a useful tendency to try to readapt old learning strategies to novel problems.
D) the basis for non-associative learning when applied to unfamiliar situations.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The scenario described is an example of classical conditioning, where the reflexive behavior of feeling fear became associated with the sound of a toilet flushing. Extinction refers to the process of inhibiting or weakening this learned association, which can occur if the conditioned stimulus (toilet flushing) is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus (hot water). However, in this case, extinction did not occur fully since Kathy only experienced the sound of a flushing toilet without the negative consequence while visiting her parents, but the association remained intact when she returned home. This suggests that extinction is a form of learning that inhibits the learned association rather than completely deleting it.

When Kathy Is in the Shower and Someone Flushes the Toilet,the